A socio-ecological approach to improve industrial zones towards eco-industrial parks

Abstract

One of the concrete examples of industrial symbiosis development is eco-industrial parks, which improves resource efficiency and minimizes environmental impacts by adopting models for waste exchanges between industries. Despite past efforts, many industrial zones around the world are not yet considered as eco-industrial parks because of the low number (or total lack) of symbiotic relationships among industries. A promising strategy is to develop those existing industrial zones into eco-industrial parks. However, there is a lack of studies addressing how to assess the environmental improvement in relation to network sustainability. This study demonstrates such an assessment approach using an integration of food web analysis and social network analysis. These two methods can assist in assessing differences in network configurations with respect to potential implementations of industrial symbiosis, and in analysing the resilience, redundancy, connectance, and cyclicity of eco-parks. The use of the methods is illustrated in a case study of an industrial zone in Turkey. Four potential future scenarios are proposed including potential future co-location of companies in the industrial zone in order to foster industrial symbiotic network formation. These scenarios are compared with the current configuration. The results indicate the method's ability to assess the resilience of an industrial network. Moreover, the case shows an improvement of network sustainability and follows some sustainable properties of natural ecosystems as a result of implementing the industrial symbiosis.

Studying human–nature relationships through a network lens: A systematic review

“…not specifically incorporated) realm of the SES, only few studies presented a methodological approach for crossing the social–ecological interface. Examples include Ossola, Locke, Lin, and Minor (2019), who analysed tree canopy connectivity with node attributes being human use type, and Genc, Van Capelleveen, Erdis, Yildiz, and Yazan (2019), who applied both ENA and SNA metrics to a social network consisting of waste flows between companies. One study combined social network analysis with agent‐based modelling to investigate human behaviour as to inform conservation interventions (Dobson, De Lange, Keane, Ibbett, & Milner‐Gulland, 2019).…”

Trends in global research on industrial parks: A bibliometric analysis from 1996–2019

“…Table 4 shows specific information of top 10 most productive authors, including institution, country, TP and so on. The top three authors with the most significant number of articles published during the period are Zhang Yan (32), Geng Yong (31), and Tian Jinping (16). Geng Yong has the largest number of total citations (968) by the other authors.…”

“…However, the rapid development and growth of IPs, reflected in the more than 20,000 IPs built worldwide [ 10 , 11 ] has generated problems related to intensive resource consumption and pollution caused by industrial activities developed inside them by planning problems and the inappropriate oversight of environmental regulation [ 12 , 13 , 14 ]. These problems have aroused the interest in and pressure of society on the industrial sector to seek alternative sources of resources and energy, as well as new methods to apply in industrial processes [ 15 , 16 ], intending to promote the development of industrial processes and products that diminish their environmental impact while maintaining social and economic benefits [ 17 ]. The principles of sustainable development (SD) have been integrated into the industrial sector through the sustainable business model concept.…”

Energy-based industrial symbiosis: a literature review for circular energy transition

“…However, companies usually lack awareness on how to introduce the IS approach into their current business practice (Fraccascia et al 2016). Aimed at supporting the adoption of IS, the literature provides several contributions on IS business models discussing a wide range of factors (e.g., technical, operational, logistical, spatial, regulatory, marketrelated, and environmental) that might influence the cooperation dynamics among companies (Chopra and Khanna 2014;Genc et al 2019;Herczeg et al 2018;Madsen et al 2015;Sakr et al 2011;Tudor et al 2007;Yazan and Fraccascia 2020). However, so far the literature has mainly focused on material-based IS synergies, while less attention has been devoted to energy-based IS synergies, i.e., symbiotic synergies where a waste of one production process is exploited for energy-purposed by another production process.…”