Encyclopedia of Environmental Science and Engineering, Volume I and II

INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY 503

In this context, industrial firm-to-firm interactions have

been examined by ecological food-web theory (Hardy and

Graedel, 2002), and the theoretical approaches of thermody-

namics and self-organization have also been applied to these

systems (Ayres, 1988).

The interaction between the worlds of industry and

ecology emphasizes that industrial ecology is a systems

science that places emphasis on the interactions among

the components of the systems being studied. This sys-

tems orientation is manifested in several of the research

topics of the field, including life-cycle analysis, industrial

metabolism, system models and scenarios, and sustainabil-

ity assessment (Lifset and Graedel, 2002), topics that are

discussed below.

THE ORIGINS OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY

For many thousands of years, nature dominated the

human-nature relationship. This dominance was reversed

by the growth of agriculture and especially by the industrial

revolution of the 1800s. The implications for nature of this

ECOSYSTEM

Component

ECOSYSTEM

Component

ECOSYSTEM

Component

ECOSYSTEM

Component

ECOSYSTEM

Component

ECOSYSTEM

Component

ECOSYSTEM

Component

Unlimited resources Unlimited waste

Limited waste

Energy &

Limited resources

(a) Type I: linear material flows

(b) Type II: quasi-cyclic material flows

(c) Type III: cyclic material flows

FIGURE 1 Typology of ecosystems. From Graedel and Allenby, 2003; Lifset and Graedel, 2002. (a) Type I:

linear material flows; (b) Type II: quasi-cyclic material flows; (c) Type III: cyclic material flows; (d) Type II

industrial ecosystem.

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