Within industrial ecology, there is a substantial community focusing on life cycle assessment (LCA) and corresponding tools and methods. Within the field of supply chain management, an increasing community is converging around sustainable supply chains. These two communities study the same underlying systems, but bring different perspectives to bear. We review seven issues that arise at this in...

In a recent article of this journal, Robert et al. [Journal of Cleaner Production 10 (2002) 197] define five hierarchical and interdependent levels for a systems approach for strategic sustainable development (SSD) to move toward the desired outcome, the state of sustainability. This paper evaluates the concept of industrial ecology (IE) by considering its application and use in terms of the st...

Industrial ecology, promoted as a discipline of ‘sustainability science,’ applies ecological concepts to industrial systems to improve their sustainability. Concepts such as diversity, food webs and nutrient recycling have been investigated for industrial systems. Complex systems theory may also prove to be an appropriate framework for industrial systems research. This framework can identify th...

Industrial ecology will need to develop fundamentally new approaches to reducing, reusing, and recycling wastes. Industrial ecology will also require an analytic framework for examining the implications for the economic system as a whole of each potential web of industrial changes. A suitable framework is furnished by structural economics, which situates the economy within the physical world. T...

This paper presents a systems analysis perspective that extends the traditional process design framework to green process design, green energy and industrial ecology leading to sustainability. For green process design this involves starting the design decisions as early as chemical and material selection stage on one end, and managing and planning decisions at the other end. However, uncertaint...

This paper considers the limits and potential of ‘urban metabolism’ to conceptualize city processes. Three ‘ecologies’ of urban metabolism have emerged. Each privileges a particular dimension of urban space, shaped by epistemology, politics, and model-making. Marxist ecologies theorize urban metabolism as hybridized socionatures that (re)produce uneven outcomes; industrial ecology, as stocks an...