Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
listic approaches replace the traditional separate and linear solutions to inputs and
outputs in towns or in industrial units, which may lead to the creation of symbiotic
relationships among them (KS). One of the earliest, and perhaps best-known large-
scale examples of this approach can be found in Kalundborg (Denmark) where a
so-called eco-industrial complex has been created from the symbiotic relationships
between three main industrial units—the Asnaes power plant, the Statoil refinery,
the Novo-Nordisk chemical company—and other local activities, such as a plas-
terboard company and the local municipality (Ehrenfeld and Gertler
1997
). This
example provides a variation on most industrial clusters where local industries have
grown up to produce goods that are either input to other local industries, or use
outputs from them.
Figure
5.5
shows that some of the waste outputs from the three main plants are
not just dumped or carted away as in typical linear solutions. They now provide
valuable inputs to the other main plants and industries in the vicinity. These local
inputs have substantially reduced new material inputs from other sources and their
transport costs, as well as providing significant environmental benefits, since for-
mer wastes, such as excess heat and much of the sulphur dioxide pollutants from
the largest coal-fired power plant and oil refinery in Denmark, are now used in the
local industrial plants. This eco-industrial complex, 110 km west of Copenhagen,
did grow up spontaneously, with no co-ordinated planning in the decades after the
oil refinery was established in 1961. The managers of the various firms lived lo-
cally and seem to have gradually recognized how they could help each other by
developing the symbiotic processes shown in Fig.
5.5
. They calculated the various
Fig. 5.5
Eco-cycle linkages of Kalundborg industrial plants. (Source: Revised from Kalundborg
Symbiosis Institute and Ehrenfeld and Gertler
1997
)
