Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 2
The interface between industry, consumers, and the natural environment in an
industrial ecosystem. (reprinted with permission from
The Greening of Industrial
Ecosystems,
courtesy of National Academy Press)
business's interactions with the natural environment. We need to examine
the history of four crucial factors:
• the roles played by the distribution of natural resources, topography, cli-
mate and other natural environmental forces in the evolution of business
firms and economic activity
• the effects of industrial activity on biological ecosystems, climate, natural
materials cycles, and the physical landscape
• how business managers, ordinary citizens, and more broadly society
through government have managed (or not managed) business's impacts on
and interactions with the natural world
• the meanings society has imputed to such impacts and interactions and
its efforts to manage them over time.
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