Glossary

The 20 most important terms in industrial ecology.

Generated with TianGong Chat on 7 November 2023

Term	Definition
Closed-loop recycling	The process where the waste or by-product from one industry is used as input for another.
Cleaner production	Current preventive environmental activities that could play a role in the implementation of industrial ecology.
Design for environment	A level of industrial ecology that includes pollution prevention, eco-efficiency, and green accounting.
Dematerialisation and decarbonisation	A level of industrial ecology that operates at the regional/global level.
Eco-Industrial Park (EIP)	Companies included in an EIP can be viewed as different organisms in a food chain engaging in exchanges of material and energy.
Industrial development	The balance of industrial development with the sustainable use of natural resources including energy, materials, and the
Industrial Ecology (IE)	A novel approach to the production of consumer goods, the design of industrial processes, and the definition of corporate strategies aimed at achieving sustainable development.
Industrial ecosystem	A system where the consumption of energy and materials is optimized, waste generation is minimized, and the effluents of one process serve as the raw material for another process.
Industrial ecosystems	The concept that promotes solutions aimed at improving the industry’s environmental impact.
Industrial metabolism	A level of industrial ecology that includes budgets and cycles, as well as materials and energy flow studies.
Industrial symbiosis	The highly inter-dependent relationship between diversified clusters of firms for exchanging materials, energy, water, and
Industrial symbiosis collaboration	A primordial feature of an industrial symbiosis is the collaboration offered by the geographic proximity of the
Industrial system	A system that operates in concert with rather than isolated from surrounding ecosystems, with the aim of optimizing the material
Industrial ecology perspectives	Perspectives that can help to optimize industrial systems for energy generation, transfer, or transformation.
Industrial ecology system’s theory	A well-known concept in ecology that is closely related to industrial ecosystems.
Industrial ecology’s core objectives	The focus on whether cleaner production in its present form is sufficient, in terms of breadth of both
Life cycle analysis	A level of industrial ecology that involves industrial symbiosis, and industrial sector initiatives.
Reuse, remanufacture, and recycling	Practices that represent a move towards closed-loop material and energy use.
Roundput	The idea that the effluents of a company become the input of another to minimize virgin input.
Science of sustainability	A succinct and oft-cited idea that industrial ecology is the science of sustainability.