Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ticular, sophistication in engineering, business and technology fields is
required.This, of course, reflects the basic premise that technology—which
is, after all, the means by which humans interact with the environment—is
a crucial theme of industrial ecology. More subtly, remediation and com-
pliance programs generally assume a complete understanding of the systems
involved, so that a specific regulation can be targeted to have the desirable
effects without causing any unanticipated side effects elsewhere. If properly
implemented, this is an appropriate approach to specific, well-defined,
localized hazards. For the kinds of complex natural and human systems with
which industrial ecology deals, however, it is inappropriate, the more so
because it is often unconscious.
This highlights one of the principal lessons that modern environmental-
ism and industrial ecology teach, but one which is often ignored: our
lack of knowledge about these complex systems and their interactions is
profound. In fact, in many cases we lack the data and understanding to
even ask the right questions. In industrial ecology, this is frequently illus-
trated in assessments of environmental impacts of technologies or mate-
rials over their life cycle, which tend to reveal significant surprises. One
example is the issue of paper versus plastic drinking cups, which was a
fairly contentious debate until a life-cycle study by the government of
the Netherlands surprised everybody by demonstrating that, under
most circumstances, both paper and plastic disposable cups were prefer-
able to ceramic ones, a quite counterintuitive result.
2
Another life-cycle
study indicated that, from an environmental perspective, it was probably
better to discard a polyester blouse after one wearing and buy a new one
than to wash it (because of the energy and material inputs required by
washing and drying).
3
A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY
True to the systems approach, industrial ecology is best illustrated by locat-
ing it within a conceptual framework that, at least in broad outline, links
goals and methodologies. One such framework is presented in figure 1; it
should be taken, of course, as illustrative and not definitive at this point.
4
The highest level is the vision of sustainable development. This was
defined by the Brundtland Commission (formally the World Commission
on Environment and Development), which originated the term, as “devel-
