Implementing industrial ecology in regeneration activities: A possible pathway for transforming China's local-regional industrial systems towards sustainability?

Abstract

As numerous industrial regeneration projects are planned and implemented, it is essential to ensure that these projects will contribute to a more sustainable future, especially for those industrial sites that maintain primary industrial use. This paper suggests that implementing industrial ecology in the regeneration of industrial sites (i.e. sustainable industrial regeneration) is a critical pathway for the ecological transformation of China's local-regional industrial systems. Through the lens of Actor Network Theory (ANT), this paper develops a conceptual framework to re-conceptualize sustainable industrial regeneration as a reassembling process of social-material configuration towards sustainability and to reveal the mechanisms of ecological transformation of industrial networks in China. The detailed case study of Hengding Industrial Park in Shunde District shows that the reassembled industrial network has transformed the poor initial conditions through the implementation of industrial ecology initiatives (e.g. utility sharing and cascade recycling). However, in view of the network convergence and driving forces behind actor enrollment, the actor-networking performance faces a challenge in effectively transforming the sites towards regional industrial ecology. Three conditions strongly influencing the implementation of the eco-transformation pathway in Chinese industrial areas are the highly concentrated power and responsibility of administrative actors, initial industrial site conditions, and cluster-based relationships.