Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
HOW ARE THE PRINCIPLES OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
APPLIED TO BENEFIT THE ENVIRONMENT?
The old adage that “one man's trash is another man's treasure” offers an
oversimplified definition of the goals of industrial ecology. Industrial ecol-
ogy, the historian Christine Rosen explains,“is founded on the recognition
that business and nature are inseparable parts of a single interactive 'indus-
trial ecosystem.' ” Rosen traces the history of early industrial waste man-
agement—typically, recycling and “end-of-pipe” methods meant to treat
the effluents of factories—and shows how the principles of industrial ecol-
ogy have grown from the inadequacies of earlier systems. Rosen's brand of
environmental business history, she argues, “will help managers and policy
makers to better understand the advantages of making the transition to new,
more effective, more systematic ways of mitigating industry's harmful
impacts.”
Braden Allenby is one of the founders of the field of industrial ecology.
In his essay, he offers examples of how waste from one industry becomes
raw material for another. The systems view of industrial ecology links tech-
nology, human culture, and economics, emphasizing that all three are inter-
connected in their effects on the environment.There is another component
to effective stewardship of the planet, though,Allenby argues.“While indus-
trial ecology may be able to help understand what is possible within tech-
nological, population, and economic constraints, it is institutions and values
which must determine the answer to that question.”
Robert Socolow, a physicist, has devoted much of his life to uniting his
love of science and his sense of social responsibility. He rejected a career in
arms control (“I so disliked weapons that I couldn't force myself to learn
about them”), forged close ties with Russian and North Vietnamese scien-
tists in the pre-Glasnost era, and edited
Patient Earth
(1971), an early text
designed to teach students in science about environmental issues. In the
