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Lecture #3
Industrial Ecology
5 February 2020
What is an ecosystem?
An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and
microbes) in conjunction with the nonliving components of their environment (air,
water and mineral soil) interacting as a system.
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Trophic levels
Top
carnivores
Carnivores,
Some omnivores
Heterotrophs
(other feeders)
Carnivores,
Omnivores
Herbivores,
Omnivores
Photosynthetic
organisms Autotrophs
(self-feeders)
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Productivity of ecosystems
Gross primary productivity (GPP)
• Rate at which an ecosystem’s producers (usually plants) convert solar energy into
chemical energy in the form of biomass over a given time span.
• Usually measured in terms of energy production per unit area over a given time
span, such as kilocalories per square meter per year (kcal m‒2 yr‒1).
• Rate at which producers use photosynthesis to produce and store chemical energy
minus the rate at which they use some of this stored chemical energy through
aerobic respiration.
Productivity of ecosystems
NPP = GPP – R
Glucose produced during photosynthesis
(i.e., gross primary productivity)
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Our economic subsystem operating within the parent ecosystem (i.e., the global natural
ecosystem) uses physical flows of materials and energy in a linear fashion.
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Our existing economic model is, therefore, unsustainable as, eventually, we shall use up
all the natural resources we have and there will be nothing left for future generations.
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Industrial ecology
Conceptualises industry as a man-made ecosystem that operates in a similar way to
natural ecosystems, where the waste or by product of one process is used as an input into
another process.
Integrates the principles of science, engineering, and ecology in industrial systems through
which goods and services are provided in a way that minimizes environmental impact and
optimizes utilization of resources, energy, and capital.
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Circular Economy
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Circular economy
A biomimetic concept, inspired by the flow of resources and energy within
ecosystems.
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Users, with their values, attitudes, and most importantly their behaviours, are
the key enablers of a circular economy.
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WHY ?
To enable a healthier planet
HOW ?
Purchasing steam from a local waste
incinerator
Dulux Weathershield solar reflective paint
Rediset additives that allow asphalt to be
mixed at lower temperatures
Intersleek marine coatings that help ships
to reduce fuel consumption and cut
emissions
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WHY ?
To enable local production at scale
To nourish communities with safe food
To provide dependable and food supply
HOW ?
Technology enabled farming techniques
leveraging modern biotechnologies to
develop augmented farming capabilities
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WHY ?
To influence the environmental impact of
shoes after the point of purchase
To produce the most environmentally
friendly shoes possible
Increase consumer engagement and loyalty
HOW ?
Product designed entirely for disassembly
Enable in-store return
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WHY ?
Puma understood sustainability as a mega
trend that was embedded into the
enterprise as a competitive advantage and
social corporate responsibility
HOW ?
Development of biodegradable apparel to
minimize the environment impact at the end
of life
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WHY ?
To support its commitment to environmental
sustainability
To differentiate itself from mainstream
consumption patters
To reduce consumption across clothing
value chain
HOW ?
Provide a repair service for damaged
Patagonia goods to extend product life
Host an online trading/market platform
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WHY ?
To find opportunities for new end-of-life
parts
To provide customers with quality
equipment that provides the best economic
proposition for their business
To keep renewable resources in circulation
for multiple lifetimes
HOW ?
Development of a remanufacturing and
repair service
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WHY ?
Improve availability and accessibility of
drop-off sites
Engage consumers to increase return rates
and extend life of electronic devices
HOW ?
Provide an automated, self-serve kiosk that
quickly evaluates and buys back used
consumer electronics for cash
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Centered on the sharing of products and assets that have a low ownership or use rate.
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WHY ?
Respond to consumer pains of multiple
foods delivery offerings
Contextualization of value proposition to
urban settings of high density and
congestion
Offering to Hotel/Restaurant/Café
businesses to maximize revenue from
kitchen assets
HOW ?
Create a marketplace offering of various
restaurants (DELIVEROO)
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WHY ?
To maximize utility of resources
To offer an improved return on investment
to customers
To lower the operating costs of customers
HOW ?
Create a business-to-business (B2B)
marketplace for businesses to advertise
offers or post need requests
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WHY ?
Commitment to produce high quality
products
Capture more value in client relationships
by offering additional maintenance services
of products
HOW ?
Today’s “power by the hour” programs are
highly sustained by use of internet of things
and connectivity to detect usage,
performance and defaults.
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WHY ?
To turn around an ailing business and
differentiate the customer value proposition
to customers
HOW ?
Development of a “tool fleet management”
service as a new value proposition for
customers
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Industrial Symbiosis
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Industrial symbiosis
A business relationship focused on sharing resources: an association between two or more
industrial facilities or companies in which the wastes or byproducts of one become the raw
materials for another. Even simpler: “One’s trash, another’s treasure”.
This kind of co-operation reduces the total impact of the industry on the environment, and
the individual businesses improve their bottom-line figures as well as their competitiveness.
Industrial symbiosis is a subset of the academic term ‘industrial ecology’ which again is a
subset of the ‘circular economy’ umbrella.
Industrial symbiosis is a key enabling business model for advancing the move to a circular
economy.
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Thermodynamic limits
Due to the second law of thermodynamics, recycling will always require energy and will
always be incomplete, generating wastes and side-products (increasing entropy, decreasing
exergy) of its own.
Dissipated materials are lost in the ecosystem and it is impossible to recover them. The
search, gathering and recovery would require vast amounts of energy. Therefore, complete
recycling is impossible.
Like all material and energy using processes, circular economy promoted recycling, reuse,
remanufacturing and refurbishment processes too will ultimately lead to unsustainable levels
of resource depletion, pollution and waste generation if the growth of the physical scale of
the total economic system is not checked.
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Therefore, although sustainable development is a global goal, circular economy projects that
have been implemented and that will be implemented in the near future will always be local
or regional at most.
Each circular economy project should, therefore, be considered for its contribution to global
net sustainability in the long-term. This means what is left as improvement or positive
outcome after an individual project or action as compared to a situation before the project.
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When production efficiency increases, production costs decrease and eventually the prices
of end-products decrease. This boosts up consumption.
Therefore, perhaps the most important question for circular economy in terms of long-term
sustainable development of the global society is how can the saved resources and money
generated by the circular economy model be directed to sustainable consumption practices.
If the current consumption culture will not change, circular economy will remain as a
technical tool that does not change the course of the current unsustainable economic
paradigm.
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Usually the first accepted idea achieves the best markets and receives most awareness.
Returns to scale and learning effects make the first innovation stronger in the market than
innovations penetrating the market later.
This phenomenon is known as path dependency and lock-in, the ‘survival of the first instead
of the fittest’.
In the context of circular economy, this means that new innovations, models and systems
designed for product reuse, remanufacturing and refurbishment have to compete in the
market with the more conventional recycling for low quality raw materials utilization systems
and combustion for energy solutions.
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New business models including product design for multiple life cycles, leasing and renting
the product while maintaining its ownership and reverse logistics in the supply chain have
been proposed for circular economy. All of these require interorganizational sustainability
management.
Inter-organizational cooperation is required between the supplier firm and the customer firm
(business to business marketing) and between the producer and consumer, e.g., in leasing
or renting the product while retaining ownership.
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The concept of waste is always constructed in a certain cultural, social and temporal context
and this context is dynamic and changing.
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