Benefits Of Industrial Symbiosis Research Articles

Combining Industrial Symbiosis With Sustainable Supply Chain Management for the Development of Urban Communities

Growing urban population is putting pressure on the supply of natural resources leading to global environmental impacts and calling for new ways to manage urban development. Circular economy strategies can provide the means to both increase resource productivity and generate new business opportunities. Industrial symbiosis is one such strategy. We explore an industrial symbiosis application in this paper. While most previous industrial symbiosis applications have been limited to eco-industrial parks, here we propose an adaptation of the industrial symbiosis and sustainable supply chain management concepts to urban areas in general. It is a way to develop economic clusters incorporating symbiotic links between multiple products supply chains. A proposed iterative facilitated industrial symbiosis method identifies an economic cluster focus, stakeholders, opportunities for resource exchange, and sharing of infrastructure, as well as other important elements. The method provides systematic guidance for practitioners seeking ways to grow local industry and economy, increase resource productivity, reduce wastes, and better utilize local resources. Benefits of industrial symbiosis and barriers to its implementation are also identified in the method. The method comprises five phases, each illustrated on an example drawn from our application of the method in an urban development in Gothenburg, a city in Sweden.

Industrial Symbiosis in Brownfields in Kranj, Slovenia

Kranj is the third biggest municipality in Slovenia, by number of inhabitants. It was a highly industrialised city before the 1990s. Today it still has major electronics, rubber and other manufacturers, but because of the change of economic system, globalisation and the independence of Slovenia in 1991, many factories went bankrupt, leaving a high number of brownfield sites behind. Despite existing brownfields, many new developments in the last 25 years were built on greenfield sites. Recent economic growth in Slovenia is mainly based on competitive export-oriented industries and their need to expand places additional pressure on soil sealing. This paper focuses on the potentials of industrial symbiosis in the City of Kranj in brownfields regeneration, mainly by improving the attractiveness of (partly) abandoned former industrial sites. Eco-industrial parks and industrial symbiosis are important elements of the new green (circular) economy, by reducing the need for raw materials, energy and water in industrial processes, but by building them in greenfield areas, we neglect the importance of land and soil as a very limited natural resource. In 2015, the City of Kranj adopted its Sustainable Urban Strategy 2030 and many of its objectives could be achieved through the concept of industrial symbiosis. Also, in 2017, a new inventory of brownfield sites was made, based on the standardised methodology for the whole Slovenia. This paper examines the potentials to establish industrial symbiosis by analysing three strategic documents. The benefits of industrial symbiosis can be seen for both industry seeking new development sites and the municipality, which aims to reduce soil sealing through brownfields reactivation.

The modern pillars of Circular Economy

Relationship between industry and environment is crucial for industrial business performance. Environmental impacts have incrementally increased pressure on industrial businesses. Looking back to the beginning of the industrial revolution, mass production of goods was enabled by new manufacturing methods resulting in products with high availability and low costs. Consequently, due to new consumer societies and staggering growth in industrial activity, emissions to environment, solid waste generation and landfill have become increasingly severe. In addition, due to a growing world population and especially strong middle-class growth the demand for resources is expected to rise rapidly indicating a rising consumption of natural resources. This paper shows the modern concepts of the circular economy and industrial ecology, emphasiyng the benefits of industrial symbiosis

Evaluation of promoting industrial symbiosis in a chemical industrial park: A case of Midong

Circular economy (CE) is key national strategy of China to achieve its long-term sustainable development. Industrial symbiosis (IS) is one practical approach to promote CE for achieving both environmental and economic benefits simultaneously. Chemical industry has a feature of various material and energy flows and is regarded as one key industry to promote IS. However, quantitative analysis of economic and environmental consequence for IS activities is still rare, especially for chemical industrial parks in western China. Under such a circumstance, this study is aiming to shed light on the current IS activities in a typical chemical industrial park in western China, so as to quantitatively evaluate the environmental benefits and economic benefits of IS, including the benefits of each IS chain, the benefits of each participated industrial company and the total benefits of the whole IS network in Midong Chemical Industrial Park (MCIP). Results show that: the annual exchanged volume of undesired material from 32 IS activities in MCIP was more than 4.74 million tons per year, covering 19 different kinds of undesired materials and involving 18 industrial companies within MCIP. The top four exchanged materials were carbide slag, coal gangue, fly ashes and slag, with the exchanged volumes of 1.07, 0.97, 0.92 and 0.68 million tons per year, respectively. From the perspective of IS chains, IS chain number 1 (carbide slag exchange between Huatai Chemical Corp. and Tianshan Cement Corp.) gained the most environmental benefits, with more than 2 million tons and the most economic benefit of 154 million RMB (25.08 million US dollar) per year. From the perspective of industrial companies, Huatai Chemical Corp. received the most economic benefits, while Shenhua Thermal Power Plant and Tianshan Cement Corp. received the most environmental benefits. Totally, IS activities contributed 5.86 million tons of environmental benefits and 382.43 million RMB (62.29 million US dollar) of economic benefits to MCIP. In order to further promote IS in MCIP, several recommendations were proposed, such as increasing CE awareness and environmental awareness of all the stakeholders, restriction of virgin resources, encouragement of urban symbiosis, establishment of a functional information platform and improvement of CE-related technologies.

Insight into industrial symbiosis and carbon metabolism from the evolution of iron and steel industrial network

Industrial Symbiosis (IS) as an effective way to promote the sustainable development of industrial network has attracted extensive attention. Exploring the evolution of IS is crucial to present a dynamic perspective of IS. This paper highlights the drivers and the mechanism of policies on the evolution of IS as well as the environmental benefits of IS. A backward approach that provides comprehending on how industrial network emerged over time was used to analyze the sequences of IS in a typical case study of an iron and steel industrial network from 1958 to 2012. Results show that symbiotic links increased from 2 to 75 over time, with the average number of symbiotic links per entities from 1 to 3.26. The main guiding factors in the evolution of industrial symbiosis are not only the interests of enterprises and knowledge of industrial symbiosis, but also related policies and regulations. Industrial symbiosis can improve carbon metabolism efficiency and avoid pollutants emissions. Exchange-based IS can avoid more carbon dioxide emission (CO2) than the other pollutants, and energy exchanges had a greater contribution to pollutants emission reduction than the solid waste/byproduct exchanges. The network structure and the evolution of IS can be understood better through considering not only the inter-firm level and the regional or global level but also the intra-firm level.

Industrial Symbiosis Exchanges: Developing a Guideline to Companies

Current industrial symbiosis (IS) research focuses to a large extent on either (1) how likely different factors and conditions are to lead to the development of IS exchanges, (2) barriers to IS or (3) on network theories. There is less focus on how to realize actual exchanges between companies. The purpose of this paper is thus to operationalize current theories and knowledge of such IS barriers in order to provide a guideline on realization of IS projects and hereby make the knowledge of the scientific community applicable in the everyday work of companies. The findings of previous IS research are combined with both research on two companies currently in the process of establishing an IS exchange, as well as practitioners working with facilitation of such exchanges. Lastly, the findings and research are combined to determine what should be the content of a guideline on IS, so that it provides motivated companies with knowledge on potential barriers and opportunities in a way that is directly applicable to their everyday work. The study shows that important barriers for realizing IS-exchanges that can be influenced by companies are mainly related to a lack of resources in the form of money, time, and knowledge, technical issues and collaborative issues. This leads to the recommendation that the contents of a guideline should address information about the concept and benefits of IS, local facilitation programs, if available, and what to be aware of, if there are no facilitation programs or if the companies decide not to take advantage of them.

Industrial symbiosis in the former Soviet Union

In this contribution we discuss the context, theory and significance of industrial symbiosis in the former Soviet Union, drawing information from original documents in Russian as well as international scientific literature. We describe the Soviet concepts of 'combined production', present from the earliest years of the Soviet Union, and 'waste-free technology', introduced in the final decades before collapse. We show that Soviet scientists were familiar with such elements of modern industrial ecology as the analogy between natural and industrial ecosystems, and the need for a diverse range of actors within an industrial ecosystem. Although the potential environmental benefits of industrial symbiosis were eventually recognised, Soviet planners pursued industrial symbiosis primarily as a means to increase production. We provide examples of Soviet implementation of industrial symbiosis in various industrial sectors. We then discuss strengths, weaknesses, possibilities and limitations of Soviet industrial symbiosis, and draw possible lessons for modern industrial ecology.