Industrial ecology? A surprising, intriguing expression that immediately draws our attention. The spontaneous reaction is that "industrial ecology" is a contradiction in terms, something of an oxymoron, like "obscure clarity" or "burning ice". Why this reflex? Probably because we are accustomed to considering the industrial system as isolated from the Biosphere, with factories and cities on one...

Industrial ecology introduced a new paradigm of principles and tools useful to academic analysis and decision support activities for industry and policymakers. This paper presents a view of the state of the art of industrial ecology, encompassing the four major theoretical traditions comprising the field, and emphasizing the relevance to practice. The principles of industrial ecology offer a ba...

Over the past decade, a new approach to environmental analysis has developed. Although the scope and definition are not yet completely fixed, the new field of “industrial ecology” focuses on reducing the environmental impacts of goods and services, on systems-based analysis of environmental problems, and on innovations that can significantly improve environmental performance. Industrial ecology...

Setting out the goals and boundaries of an emerging field is a hapless task. Set them too conservatively and the potential of the field is thwarted. Set them too expansively and the field loses its distinctive identity. Spend too much time on this task and scarce resources may be diverted from making concrete progress in the field. But in a field with a name as provocative and oxymoronic as ind...

This article reveals the leading role of standards in Industrial Ecology. It describes the tendency for the modern stage of world development to introduce widely accepted international standards. Along with this, each country has it own system of standards and respective specifics. A number of significant standards are available for practical operations of industries and institutions, e.g. the ...