Industrial ecology is a multidisciplinary field of study which seeks to mitigate harmful environmental impact through the evaluation and quantification of materials, substance flows, and industrial processes on regional, national, and global platforms. Likewise, it is concerned with the intimate relationship between human industrial systems and natural ecosystems and how to bridge the gap between the two. Through the employment of various analytical techniques, industrial ecology seeks to develop models and strategies that promote sustainable practice in industry. Because of this, it has at times been referred to as “the science of sustainability”. 

Image: International Society for Industrial Ecology website

Within the field of industrial ecology, attention has been given to designing industrial communities and systems by observing and emulating ecological systems. Such a collaborative group of businesses modeled after natural systems has been deemed an eco-industrial park. In an eco-industrial park, “waste” from one industry, instead of being disposed of as is common practice, becomes raw materials for another industry. This is similar to nature’s interactive "community" of organisms, where waste produced by one group is regarded as output soon to become input for another group. The general opinion is that if industry could be more directly connected to nature, it would become more prosperous, more sustainable, and would be overall more environmentally favorable for the area’s surrounding hinterlands.  

In 1989, industrial ecology became popular with the publication of Robert A. Frosch and Nicholas E. Gallopoulos’s article Strategies for Manufacturing published in the Scientific American. This article asserts that it is imperative we create symbiotic relationships in industry such as are present in an eco-industrial park. It contends that “the traditional model of industrial activity in which individual manufacturing processes take in raw materials and generate products to be sold plus waste to be disposed of should be transformed into a more integrated model” namely, “an industrial ecosystem”. A classic example is the industrial ecosystem running in Kalundborg, Denmark pictured in the model below. Its use of material exchange decreases aggregate hazardous output.

Image: Pollution Issues Website

For some updates, news events, and further reading about the field of industrial ecology visit the following websites: Center for Industrial Ecology, International Society for Industrial Ecology, Journal of Industrial Ecology, and Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal