Feature

From waste to profit

With natural resources declining in both quantity and quality, the time has come to practice resource recovery. Materials, water, and energy that are regarded as unproductive by one company can be turned into a business opportunity by another operating nearby. Twenty years since the concept of industrial ecosystems was first proposed, RENE VAN BERKEL considers strategies for achieving further eco-industrial development.

RENE VAN BERKEL is Chief of the Cleaner and Sustainable Production Unit at the United Nations Industrial Development Organization.

 

In 1989 Scientific American published a seminal article, “Strategies for Manufacturing”, in which the authors argued for a change in business practice that would lead to the creation of ‘industrial ecosystems’. They defined an industrial ecosystem as “the transformation of the traditional model of industrial activity – in which manufacturing takes in raw materials and generates products to be sold, plus wastes to be disposed of – into a more integrated system – in which the consumption of energy and materials is optimized, and the effluents of one process serve as the raw materials for another process”.

At around the same time, in Kalundborg in Denmark, the local media reported on an industrial complex where the oil refinery, power station, pharmaceutical company, and other businesses, were cooperating to save water and energy. These collaborations were extended until, by 2003, a total of 11 companies were involved in seven collective projects for the exchange of materials, and in six collective water and energy systems. The latter included the use of waste heat for residential heating and for improving productivity in local fish farms. Kalundborg soon became the best-known example of an industrial ecosystem in practice.

The Kalundborg ecosystem grew out of a desire to cut costs and develop new industries, and grew not as part of a planned process but as a result of business decisions – arrived at both individually and collectively – by a dozen companies. This process was significantly helped by the existence of a relatively tight-knit business community with established practices of cooperation and mutual trust. The Kalundborg success-story has variously been described as ‘industrial symbiosis’, as an ‘eco-industrial park’, and as an example of ‘regional resource synergies’. All are terms referring to the physical transfers of surplus or unwanted natural resources between different businesses, in order to achieve productive use of the materials, energy, or water contained in the resources exchanged. Proponents have championed the possible benefits if Kalundborg would just be replicated on a larger scale elsewhere. Critics point to the absence of other working examples, and suggest that an industrial ecosystem cannot just be repeated at will.

In the past five years, however, a range of examples of other industrial ecosystems have been documented, including some in transitional and developing countries. A number of these emerged with the help of government incentives, but others developed without specific government intervention – self-organized by industries seeking to reduce operational costs and secure long-term access to scarce natural resources.

• Kwinana near Perth in western Australia is an isolated heavy industrial area where, over the course of two decades, 47 synergistic projects, involving 22 companies, have been developed and implemented. These include combined heat and power generation projects, innovative water recycling and reuse schemes, productive use of lime kiln dusts, and the recovery and reuse of carbon dioxide and hydrogen from industrial processes.
• l In Ulsan – known as the industrial capital of South Korea – 12 companies operate a total of nine synergistic projects, including common plants for production of process water and treatment of effluent, the production and use of biogas, copper and zinc recovery from smelting residues, and the reuse of slag in construction applications.
• Guigang City in south China hosts the country’s largest sugar producer. Since its establishment in 1954, the local company has gradually expanded its operations to achieve a comprehensive use of sugar cane. Molasses is used to produce alcohol, and the yeast from alcohol production is supplied to farmers for soil improvement. Bagasse – the fibrous residue remaining after sugar cane stalks are crushed to extract their juice – is used to manufacture paper. Sludges from pulp and sugar-making are used as supplementary fuel for power generation, while ash from the power station is used as an auxiliary material in cement making. 

In different parts of the world, governments have endeavoured to catalyze eco-industrial development. Most of past and present initiatives comprise either one or a combination of the following three strategies.

Eco-industrial park planning
Governments have assumed that knowledge of the availability of a low-cost waste resource would encourage other businesses that could potentially use such a low-cost input to co-locate its facility in close proximity to that resource. On this basis, programmes were started in North America and Europe to identify niche industry opportunities based on available or expected waste resources. These programmes often included investment support for common facilities such as effluent treatment plants or public transport connections. In 1996, the US Presidential Council for Sustainable Development identified 15 eco-industrial parks for development. However, ten years later, only seven were operational, and none had achieved substantive resource exchanges between the co-located industries. While there has been more success in Europe, it is clear that physical planning and command-and-control environmental policies and legislation are not sufficient to achieve resource exchanges between companies. 

Recycling legislation
Another strategy to provide an incentive for industries to implement symbiosis projects is to enact recycling legislation. Faced with rapid declines in available landfill capacity, since the mid-1990s, Japan has actively developed a regulatory framework for the creation of a recycling-oriented economy. Mandatory recycling rates increased the cost of waste management and recycling, thereby creating a market niche for recycling industries. In parallel, the government supported the development of advanced recycling technologies, in many cases utilizing knowledge and facilities from its ageing metallurgical and related industrial complexes. Of particular significance was the Eco-Town Programme under which the Japanese government provided support for local waste management planning, and investment subsidies for priority advanced recycling industries. Between 1997 and 2006, 26 eco-towns were established, and approximately US$1.65 billion was provided in co-funding for 61 innovative recycling projects. Their aggregated capacity is currently two million tons of waste per year, making a 7% contribution to the national waste avoidance target for 2010. The programme has triggered private sector investment in another 107 recycling facilities. One of the most successful examples is provided by Kawasaki, a city where 14 synergies connecting steel, cement, chemical and paper firms, and their offspring recycling businesses, have been documented.

Efforts to apply Japan’s Eco-Town Programme methods and policies throughout Asia are now underway. For example, there are ongoing pilot projects in Dalian and Shenyang (China) and in Penang (Malaysia). In moving towards a Circular Economy, the Chinese government has also emphasized the need for integrated recycling systems in industrial estates and cities, and has already identified some 30 model eco-industrial parks.

Industrial matchmaking
Other initiatives have focused on brokering supply and demand for recyclables. Waste exchange databases have been established in many countries, so that waste generators can list their available recyclable wastes and recyclers can source suitable input materials. The results have been mixed at best, for a numerous reasons, including the reluctance of waste generators to put sufficient details on volume and composition of their waste streams into publicly accessible databases, and the use of different chemical names for the same materials. More recently there has been a more active approach to developing matches between the supply of potentially recyclable materials and recycling industries. Between 1997 and 2001, around a dozen by-product synergy studies were carried out in the USA, Canada and Mexico. The Mexican study focused on Tampico, one of the country’s busiest ports, which also has chemical and petrochemical industries. Three synergies were eventually implemented, namely: the use of discarded polyethylene/ polypropylene for the production of cargo pallets; the use of PVC residuals for the manufacture of shoe soles; and the capture and use of waste carbon dioxide from several facilities for beverage production.

A comparable initiative was launched in Map Ta Put, the largest seaport and petrochemical complex in Thailand. Seventeen exchanges were realized, including multiple combined heat and power generation plants fired by low-grade petrochemical by-products, ash use in cement and brick making, the recovery of organic solvents, and the recovery of process carbon dioxide for dry-ice production.

These and other by-product synergy studies encouraged the British government to launch a National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) in 2005. The NISP provides comprehensive support services to link waste generators with reuse, recycling, and recovery businesses, including databases, free expert assistance, and innovation workshops. The programme has been particularly successful in helping companies to improve waste management. NISP methodology is currently being piloted in a number of transitional economies, including China and Mexico. 

 

International efforts to increase the resource productivity and environmental performance of industries in developing and transition economies have, so far, focused on company-level initiatives, particularly through cleaner production and the transfer of environmentally-sound technologies. However, as we can see from the above examples and approaches, there is ample justification for increasing the level and scope of international support to include collective opportunities. The resource efficiency and environmental challenges of our time call for a concerted and sustained effort to accelerate and scale-up both plant-level efficiency and collective synergies.

 

December 6th, 2009 at 07:18 0 Comments »

 

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