Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
published by the Netherlands Department of Housing, Physical Planning
and Environment in 1991 and the 1992 report Extended Producer
Responsibility as a Strategy to Promote Cleaner Products from Lund Uni-
versity in Sweden.Thus, even though the term “industrial ecology” was not
initially used in Europe, much related activity has occurred there, particu-
larly in the Netherlands, in Germany, and in the Scandinavian countries.
The Netherlands Department of Housing, Physical Planning and Environ-
ment, for example, initiated a unique effort to define a sustainable society
in one generation, publishing a National Environmental Policy Plan in
1989 and a National Environmental Policy Plan Plus in 1990. European
private industry also contributed significantly to the dialog on development
and the environment; of particular note is
Changing Course,
by Stephan
Schmidheiny and the Business Council for Sustainable Development (MIT
Press, 1992).
The effect of these mutually reinforcing trends has been to evolve indus-
trial ecology from just an interesting metaphor into a nascent field of study.
Though this process has not yet been completed, and the term is still sub-
ject to misuse, a number of new publications have begun to formalize the
field. Among the more notable are
The Greening of Industrial Ecosystems
(National Academy Press, 1994) and
Industrial Ecology: US-Japan Perspectives
(National Academy Press, 1994);
Industrial Ecology and Global Change
(Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994);
Industrial Ecology,
24
the first engineering
textbook in the field (Prentice-Hall, 1995);
The Industrial Ecology of the Auto-
mobile
(Prentice-Hall, 1997); and
Industrial Ecology: Policy Framework and
Implementation
(Prentice-Hall, 1999). A new scientific journal, the
Journal of
Industrial Ecology,
based at the Yale University School of Forestry and Envi-
ronmental Studies, began publication in 1997.
In parallel, there have been several efforts to begin to apply the models
and understanding of biological ecology to industrial ecology questions:
B. R. Allenby and W. E. Cooper, “Understanding Industrial Ecology from
a Biological Systems Perspective,”
Total Quality Environmental Management,
spring 1994, 343-354; T. E. Graedel, “On the Concept of Industrial Ecol-
ogy,”
Annual Review of Energy and the Environment
(1996); C. Schulze, ed.,
Engineering Within Ecological Constraints
(National Academy Press,
1996). Such efforts, however, must always be undertaken cautiously and
with care, as the intuitive appeal of the analogy can disguise the consider-
able differences between the two types of systems. Unlike economic sys-
tems, for example, biological communities do not contain agents with some
