The paper discusses different case studies prepared in the last ten years in Pakistan on the subject of ‘industrial pollution and impacts on ecological setting’. On the basis of this discussion paper draws inferences, and extrapolates them under different alternatives to stipulate their implications for ‘Shaping the Sustainable Millennium’ for Pakistan and lessons learnt for other developing co...

Industrial ecologists study phenomena at several distinct levels, and linking the resulting insights could advance the field. The disciplines of ecology and economics have each attempted, with partial success, to accomplish this by building a behavioral micro foundation, and industrial ecology should do the same. These fields all study evolving systems made up of autonomous in...

The term industrial ecology was conceived to suggest that industrial activity can be thought of and approached in much the same way as a biological ecosystem and that in its ideal form it would strive toward integration of activities and cyclization of resources, as do natural ecosystems. Beyond this attractive but fuzzy notion, little has been done to explore the usefulness of the analogy. Thi...

Industrial Ecology involves the transformation of industrial processes from linear to closed loop systems: matter and energy flows which were initially considered as wastes become now resources for existing or new processes. In this paper, Thermoeconomics, commonly used for the optimization and diagnosis of energy systems, is proposed as a tool for the characterization of Industrial Ecology. Th...

The Industrial Ecology (IE) is a new interdisciplinary field focused on sustainable development. IE aims to the shifting of industrial processes from open-loop systems where different resources move through a system to become wastes to a closed-loop system where wastes become inputs for new processes. This paper introduces a Green Virtual Enterprise (GVE) model as an emerging sustainable manufa...

The industrial system operates through different principles of system development than the ecosystem. Industrial ecology can be a fruitful metaphor for facilitating the development of industrial systems toward the principles of system development of ecosystems. In this paper the industrial ecosystem analogy includes the four ecosystem principles of roundput, diversity, locality and gradual chan...

The Theory of Waste Management is a unified body of knowledge about waste and waste management, and it is founded on the expectation that waste management is to prevent waste to cause harm to human health and the environment and promote resource use optimization. Waste Management Theory is to be constructed under the paradigm of Industrial Ecology as Industrial Ecology is equally adaptable to i...

When Frosch and Gallopolous published their seminal article “Strategies for Manufacturing” in 1989, they signaled a central concern with manufacturing in the field of industrial ecology (IE). They and other early pioneers in the field brought an interest in examining how industry could leverage its technological prowess to improve environmental outcomes. In North America, this interest emerged,...