Industrial ecology is assumed as a conceptual tool emulating models derived from natural ecosystems and it is aimed at developing fundamentally new approaches to the industrial system environmentall-oriented reorganization. It implies two essential elements of definition: it is a concept involving a systemic approach to changes in goods manufacture, use and disposal and it is a concept related to the organization of new interactions among the industrial system structural components. Starting from these assumptions, this paper opens three possible paths to the theoretical implications of such a perspective: (i) the need to conceive the sustainable industrial growth as a process of co-adaptation between natural and industrial systems; (ii) the need for a better definition of the "environment " of a manufacturing system; (iii) the possibility of designing innovative interactions for manufacturers, consumers and decomposers as structural components of the industrial ecosystem. Starting from the Seventies the possibility of re-orienting the industrial system processes referring to models derived from natural ecosystems, first let emerge some relevant natural characteristics to be emulated. The attention was primarily focussed on the assumptions that (Tibbs, 1993, p. 6): - in natural systems there's no such thing as "waste" ( if it is considered as something which can not be absorbed somewhere in the system); - nutrients for one species are derived from the decay or elimination of another; - materials are constantly circulating within an ecosystem and they are continuously transformed; - a natural system is dynamic and the identity of each of its components is defined in process terms; - a natural system allows independent activity to species individuals but all species are interlinked and held in balance through cooperation and competition; - efficiency and productivity of an ecosystem are held in balance with resiliency; - each member of an ecosystem has multiple functions. Ecosystem characteristics are conventionally divided into characteristics related to structural components and characteristics related to processes. An ecosystem is in fact conventionally made up of six processes (energy flows, food chains, biological diversity in time and space, biogeochemical cycles, differentiation in time and evolution, homeostatic control mechanisms) and six structural components (organic substances, inorganic substances, climate, producing organisms, consumers and decomposers). Such characteristics - whose possible analogy with industrial processes is simple enough to be preceived even by non specialists - sinthetize the essential functioning of natural ecosystems. Models derived from ecology to be applied to industrial processes are largely simplified: the complexity of the original structure has been somehow impoverished, mainly resulting in the simplified description of energy and material flows in industrial systems. As a matter of fact, since two decades at least, the study of industrial ecosystem has strictly meant the organization and optimization of these flows. The perspective of a progressive resource depletion and the awareness of the limits to growth let recognize 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: an industrial ecosystem. In such a system the consumption of energy and materials is optimized, waste generation is minimized and the effluents of one process - whether they are spent catalysts from petroleum refining, fly or bottom ash from electric-power generation or discarded plastic containers from consumer products - serve as raw material for another process. The industrial ecosystem should work as a biological system" (Frosch and Gallopoulos, 1989, p. 96). The cycle to be emulated is represented by the biological cycle where plants are nutrients for herbivores, which are part of the food chain of carnivores, whose wastes close the cycle as nutrients for plants. In this sense the conceptual roots of the industrial ecosystem are strongly related to the development of the concept of industrial metabolism.
Steps to industrial ecology: reflections on theoretical aspects
PIZZOCARO, SILVIA LUISA
1998-01-01
Abstract
Industrial ecology is assumed as a conceptual tool emulating models derived from natural ecosystems and it is aimed at developing fundamentally new approaches to the industrial system environmentall-oriented reorganization. It implies two essential elements of definition: it is a concept involving a systemic approach to changes in goods manufacture, use and disposal and it is a concept related to the organization of new interactions among the industrial system structural components. Starting from these assumptions, this paper opens three possible paths to the theoretical implications of such a perspective: (i) the need to conceive the sustainable industrial growth as a process of co-adaptation between natural and industrial systems; (ii) the need for a better definition of the "environment " of a manufacturing system; (iii) the possibility of designing innovative interactions for manufacturers, consumers and decomposers as structural components of the industrial ecosystem. Starting from the Seventies the possibility of re-orienting the industrial system processes referring to models derived from natural ecosystems, first let emerge some relevant natural characteristics to be emulated. The attention was primarily focussed on the assumptions that (Tibbs, 1993, p. 6): - in natural systems there's no such thing as "waste" ( if it is considered as something which can not be absorbed somewhere in the system); - nutrients for one species are derived from the decay or elimination of another; - materials are constantly circulating within an ecosystem and they are continuously transformed; - a natural system is dynamic and the identity of each of its components is defined in process terms; - a natural system allows independent activity to species individuals but all species are interlinked and held in balance through cooperation and competition; - efficiency and productivity of an ecosystem are held in balance with resiliency; - each member of an ecosystem has multiple functions. Ecosystem characteristics are conventionally divided into characteristics related to structural components and characteristics related to processes. An ecosystem is in fact conventionally made up of six processes (energy flows, food chains, biological diversity in time and space, biogeochemical cycles, differentiation in time and evolution, homeostatic control mechanisms) and six structural components (organic substances, inorganic substances, climate, producing organisms, consumers and decomposers). Such characteristics - whose possible analogy with industrial processes is simple enough to be preceived even by non specialists - sinthetize the essential functioning of natural ecosystems. Models derived from ecology to be applied to industrial processes are largely simplified: the complexity of the original structure has been somehow impoverished, mainly resulting in the simplified description of energy and material flows in industrial systems. As a matter of fact, since two decades at least, the study of industrial ecosystem has strictly meant the organization and optimization of these flows. The perspective of a progressive resource depletion and the awareness of the limits to growth let recognize 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: an industrial ecosystem. In such a system the consumption of energy and materials is optimized, waste generation is minimized and the effluents of one process - whether they are spent catalysts from petroleum refining, fly or bottom ash from electric-power generation or discarded plastic containers from consumer products - serve as raw material for another process. The industrial ecosystem should work as a biological system" (Frosch and Gallopoulos, 1989, p. 96). The cycle to be emulated is represented by the biological cycle where plants are nutrients for herbivores, which are part of the food chain of carnivores, whose wastes close the cycle as nutrients for plants. In this sense the conceptual roots of the industrial ecosystem are strongly related to the development of the concept of industrial metabolism.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
