History of industrial ecology

The establishment of industrial ecology as field of scientific research is commonly attributed to an article devoted to industrial ecosystems, written by Frosch and Gallopoulos, which appeared in a 1989 special issue of Scientific American.

Before the 1960s

The term "industrial ecology" has been used alongside "industrial symbiosis" at least since the 1940s. Economic geography was perhaps one of the first fields to use these terms. For example, in an article published in 1947, George T. Renner refers to "The General Principle of Industrial Location" as a "Law of Industrial Ecology".

Used in a different context, the term "Industrial Ecology" is also found in a 1958 paper concerned with the relationship between the ecological impact from increasing urbanization and value orientations of related peoples. The case study is in Lebanon:

The central ecological variable in the present research is ecological mobility, or the movement of men in space. It is patent that modern Industrial Ecology requires more such adaptive mobility than does traditional folk-village organization.

1960s

In 1963, we find the term Industrial Ecology (defined as the "complex ecology of the modern industrial world") being used to describe the social nature and complexity of (and within) industrial systems:

...industrial organisations are social rather than mechanical systems. A firm is not only a working organisation with a working purpose. It is rather a community with its own 'politics', in so far as it is involved in problems concerned with the proper distribution of power between individuals and groups of individuals and with questions of individual and group prestige, influence, status and standing... [and he concludes that] the understanding which the student of management is expected to gain is no less than the attainment of insight into an Industrial Ecology of great complexity.

In 1967, the President of the American association for the advancement of science writes in "The experimental city"[6] that "There are examples of industrial symbiosis where one industry feeds off, or at least neutralizes, the wastes of another..." The same author in 1970 talks about "The Next Industrial Revolution"[7] The concept of material and energy sharing and reuse is central to his proposal for a new industrial revolution and he cites agro-industrial symbiosis as a practical way for achieving this:

The object of the next industrial revolution is to ensure that there will be no such thing as waste, on the basis that waste is simply some substance that we do not vet have the wit to use... The next industrial revolution is this generating of a huge new [industry that]... will not produce products, it will rather reprocess the things we call wastes so they may be reproduced in the factories into the things we need... Having the city near the rural area will enable waste heat to be used to speed up the biological processes of treating the organic wastes before they go back into the land. This might end in an elegant arrangement-the power plants located close enough to the center of use, to the people who need the power, but also, within the economics, close enough to the agriculture lands so that the waste heat may be used there. This is an example of agro-industrial symbiosis, if you like to call it that.

In these early articles, "Industrial Ecology" is used in its literal sense - as a system of interacting industrial entities. The relation to natural ecosystems (through either metaphor or analogy) is not explicit. Industrial Symbiosis on the other hand, is already clearly defined as a type of industrial organization, and the term symbiosis is borrowed from the ecological sciences to describe an analogous phenomenon in industrial systems.

1970s

Industrial Ecology has been a research subject of the Japan Industrial Policy Research Institute since 1971. Their definition of Industrial Ecology is "research for the prospect of dynamic harmonization between human activities and nature by a systems approach based upon ecology (JIPRI, 1983)". This programme has resulted to a number of reports that are available only in Japanese.

In 1974 the term of Industrial Ecology is perhaps for the first time associated with a cyclical production mode (rather than a linear one, resulting to waste). In this article, the necessity for a transition to an "open-world Industrial Ecology", is used as argument for the need to establish lunar industries:

Low living standards provide one strong motive for most developing countries to increase their productivity and grow economically. Population increase (while it lasts) is a still more powerful driver for increased world consumption. Thus the pressure on resources will continue to grow. Instead of deploring it, we better grow with it. Only through transition to an open-world Industrial Ecology - which includes both benign industrial revolution on Earth and extraterrestrial industrialization - can the present apparent limits to growth be overcome.

Many elements of modern Industrial Ecology were commonplace in the industrial sectors of the former Soviet Union.[10] For example, “kombinirovanaia produksia” (combined production) was present from the earliest years of the Soviet Union and was instrumental in shaping the patterns of Soviet industrialization. “Bezotkhodnoyi tekhnologii” (waste-free technology) was introduced in the final decades of the USSR as a way to increase industrial production while limiting environmental impact.

1980s

By the 80s Industrial Ecology was already "promoted" to a research subject, which several institutes around the globe embraced. In a 1986 article published in Ecological Modelling, there is a full description of Industrial Ecology and the analogy to natural ecosystems is clearly stated:

The structure and inner-working of an industrial society resemble those of a natural ecosystem. The concepts in ecology such as habitat, succession, trophic level, limiting factors and community metabolism can also apply to the study of the ecology of an industrial society. For instance, an industry in a society may grow or decline as a consequence of dynamic changes in exogenous limiting resources and in the hierarchical and/or metabolic structure of that society. When studying the ecology of an industrial society (henceforth termed 'Industrial Ecology'), these concepts and methodologies employed in ecosystems analyses are useful.

During the 80s the emergence of another related term, "industrial metabolism", is observed. The term is used as a metaphor for the organization and functioning of industrial activity.

1990s - 21st century

In 1991, C. Kumar Patel organized a seminal colloquium on Industrial Ecology, held on May 20 and 21, 1991, at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C. The papers were later published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, and they form an excellent reference on Industrial Ecology.

The Journal of Industrial Ecology (since 1997), the International Society for Industrial Ecology (since 2001), and the journal Progress in Industrial Ecology (since 2004) have covered industrial ecology in the international scientific community. Principles of industrial ecology are also emerging in various policy realms such as the concept of the circular economy that is being promoted in China. Although the definition of the circular economy has yet to be formalized, generally the focus is on strategies such as creating a circular flow of materials, and cascading energy flows. An example of this would be using waste heat from one process to run another process that requires a lower temperature. This maximizes the efficiency of exergy use. This strategy aims for a more efficient economy with fewer pollutants and other unwanted by-products.