Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology (IE) seeks models from the natural world that might guide industrial activity to better environmental and economic performance. Organisms in an ecosystem fill niches and form mutually beneficial symbiotic relationships with other organisms, facilitating the cycling of materials and energy, as opposed to the traditional one use / once through resource flows common in industrial systems. Natural ecosystems support diversity and redundancy, which leads to more stable and resilient systems. Industrial ecology proposes that we can create sustainable industrial systems by mimicking the symbiotic and synergistic relationships and exchanges that occur in natural ecosystems. When this analogy is extended to the concept of an industrial ecosystem, it supports the establishment of scavenger and decomposer companies. IE differs from the other foundations in that, in addition to being an academic / research field, it also forms a ‘corporate culture’, or mindset, that will enable actors in all research pillars and foundations to view projects and opportunities in a systems-based ‘big picture’ context. With appropriate IE expertise engaged and operating at the CEE, research and/or commercialization projects will seek to maximize economic, environmental and social benefits, and result in more effective clusters.