Understanding the Evolution of Industrial Symbiosis Research

This study analyzes the evolution of the research field of industrial symbiosis (IS). We elucidate its embedding in industrial ecology (IE), trace the development of research themes, and reveal the evolution of the research network through analysis of the core literature and journals that appeared from 1997 to 2012 by citation analysis, cocitation analysis, and network analysis. In the first period (1997–2005), IS research held a minority share in the IE literature. The research revolved around the concept of IS, the assessment of eco‐industrial park projects, and the establishment of waste treatment and recycling networks. In the second period (2006–2012), diverse research approaches and theories enriched the field, which has led to a maturation in theory building. Our findings clearly illustrate that IS evolved from practice‐oriented research toward coherent theory building through a systematic underpinning and linking of diverse topics. As scientific attention shifted from exploring a phenomenon to elucidating underlying mechanisms, IS knowledge found worldwide practical implementation. The coauthorship network shows that the academic communities of IS are distributed worldwide and that international collaboration is widespread. Through bibliometric and network analysis of IS, we have created a systemic, quantitative image of the evolution of the IS research field and community, which gives IS researchers an underpinned overview of the IS research and may help them to identify new directions and synergy in worldwide research.     

From Legal Transplants to Sustainable Transition

Extended producer responsibility (EPR), which assigns significant responsibility to producers to take back their end‐of‐life products to create incentives for redesign of products with lower life cycle environmental impacts, has come to a crossroad facing a trade‐off between the original innovation‐oriented regime design and the cost‐efficiency challenges in practice. This is particularly true in its implementation in non‐Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries as they are trying to transplant the “best practices” from OECD countries, for there is increasing skepticism as to whether EPR is suitable for developing countries at all. As an important producer of electronic products and destination of electronic waste (e‐waste) flows in the world, China has been expected to play a vital role in the evolution of global governance based on the idea of EPR, either to create new ways for producers to perform their end‐of‐life strategies, or to reshape the mode of production and consumption with its fast‐growing market. However, the establishment of EPR in China has been long and full of difficulties. This article reviews the status and trends in the establishment of an EPR system for waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) management in China. We use the framework of a multilevel perspective of transition theory in our analysis to characterize the complex interactions among various agents in the evolution of the Chinese system from initial innovation‐oriented design to the current efficiency‐oriented version. An ongoing research framework for evaluation of the EPR program in China is outlined as the research agenda in coming years.     

Industrial Recycling Networks as Starting Points for Broader Sustainability‐Oriented Cooperation?

Closing loops by intercompany recycling of by‐products is a core theme of industrial ecology (IE). This article considers whether industrial recycling networks or industrial symbiosis projects can be used as a starting point for much broader intercompany cooperation for sustainable development. Evidence presented is based on the results of an empirical investigation of the recycling network Styria in Austria, the recycling network Oldenburger Münsterland in Germany, and the manufacturing sector in Austria. Statistical analysis shows that the percentage of by‐products that are passed on to other companies for recycling purposes is not higher in member companies of the recycling networks than in the other companies of the manufacturing sector in Austria. In terms of cooperation, the relationships with the respective recycling partners are found to be very similar to regular customer relations. Furthermore, the companies of the recycling networks remain unaware of the network to which they belong. Instead, one of the main findings of this study is that intercompany recycling activities are regarded by the company representatives as bilateral market transactions, not as collaborative network activities. This has potentially significant implications for the use of industrial symbiosis networks as starting points for sustainability networks with broader cooperation toward sustainability. The findings raise interesting questions as to whether such broader cooperation might result from a conscious planning process or might emerge largely spontaneously as part of normal market coordination. In any case, intercompany recycling is clearly considered to be a very important field of collaborative action for sustainability in industry.     

Implementing a Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment Methodology with a Case Study on Domestic Hot Water Production

This work contributes to the development of a dynamic life cycle assessment (DLCA) methodology by providing a methodological framework to link a dynamic system modeling method with a time‐dependent impact assessment method. This three‐step methodology starts by modeling systems where flows are described by temporal distributions. Then, a temporally differentiated life cycle inventory (TDLCI) is calculated to present the environmental exchanges through time. Finally, time‐dependent characterization factors are applied to the TDLCI to evaluate climate‐change impacts through time. The implementation of this new framework is illustrated by comparing systems producing domestic hot water (DHW) over an 80‐year period. Electricity is used to heat water in the first system, whereas the second system uses a combination of solar energy and gas to heat an equivalent amount of DHW at the same temperature. This comparison shows that using a different temporal precision (i.e., monthly vs. annual) to describe process flows can reverse conclusions regarding which case has the best environmental performance. Results also show that considering the timing of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduces the absolute values of carbon footprint in the short‐term when compared with results from the static life cycle assessment. This pragmatic framework for the implementation of time in DLCA studies is proposed to help in the development of the methodology. It is not yet a fully operational scheme, and efforts are still required before DLCA can become state of practice.     

Moving forward with the primate microbiome: Introduction to a special issue of the American Journal of Primatology

Primate microbiome research is a quickly growing field with exciting potential for informing our understanding of primate biology, ecology, and evolution as well as host‐microbe interactions more broadly. This introductory essay to a special section of the American Journal of Primatology provides a cross‐sectional snapshot of current activity in these areas by briefly summarizing the diversity of contributed papers and their relationships to key themes in host‐associated microbiome research. It then uses this survey as a foundation for consolidating a set of key research questions to broadly guide future research. It also argues for the importance of methods standardization to facilitate comparative analyses and the identification of generalizable patterns and relationships. While primatology will benefit greatly from the integration of microbial datasets, it is uniquely positioned to address important questions regarding microbiology and macro‐ecology and evolution more generally. We are eager to see where the primate microbiome leads us.     

CHAOS AND UNPREDICTABILITY IN EVOLUTION

The possibility of complicated dynamic behavior driven by nonlinear feedbacks in dynamical systems has revolutionized science in the latter part of the last century. Yet despite examples of complicated frequency dynamics, the possibility of long‐term evolutionary chaos is rarely considered. The concept of “survival of the fittest” is central to much evolutionary thinking and embodies a perspective of evolution as a directional optimization process exhibiting simple, predictable dynamics. This perspective is adequate for simple scenarios, when frequency‐independent selection acts on scalar phenotypes. However, in most organisms many phenotypic properties combine in complicated ways to determine ecological interactions, and hence frequency‐dependent selection. Therefore, it is natural to consider models for evolutionary dynamics generated by frequency‐dependent selection acting simultaneously on many different phenotypes. Here we show that complicated, chaotic dynamics of long‐term evolutionary trajectories in phenotype space is very common in a large class of such models when the dimension of phenotype space is large, and when there are selective interactions between the phenotypic components. Our results suggest that the perspective of evolution as a process with simple, predictable dynamics covers only a small fragment of long‐term evolution.     

Does the Production of an Airbag Injure more People than the Airbag Saves in Traffic?

Social life cycle assessment (S‐LCA) has been discussed for some years in the LCA community. We raise two points of criticism against current S‐LCA approaches. First, the development of S‐LCA methodology has not, to date, been based on experience with actual case studies. Second, for social impacts to be meaningfully assessed in a life cycle perspective, social indicators need to be unambiguously interpreted in all social contexts along the life cycle. We here discuss an empirically based approach to S‐LCA, illustrated by a case study of an automobile airbag system. The aim of the case study is to compare the injuries and lives lost during the product life cycle of the airbag system (excluding waste handling impacts) with the injuries prevented and lives saved during its use. The indicator used for assessing social impacts in this study is disability‐adjusted life years (DALY). The results from this study indicate that the purpose of an airbag system, which is to save lives and prevent injuries, is justified also in a life cycle perspective.     

From low to high gear: there has been a paradigm shift in our understanding of evolution

Experimental studies of evolution performed in nature and the associated demonstration of rapid evolution, observable on a time scale of months to years, were an acclaimed novelty in the 1980–1990s. Contemporary evolution is now considered ordinary and is an integrated feature of many areas of research. This shift from extraordinary to ordinary reflects a change in the perception of evolution. It was formerly thought of as a historical process, perceived through the footprints left in the fossil record or living organisms. It is now seen as a contemporary process that acts in real time. Here we review how this shift occurred and its consequences for fields as diverse as wildlife management, conservation biology, and ecosystems ecology. Incorporating contemporary evolution in these fields has caused old questions to be recast, changed the answers, caused new and previously inconceivable questions to be addressed, and inspired the development of new subdisciplines. We argue further that the potential of contemporary evolution has yet to be fulfilled. Incorporating evolutionary dynamics in any research program can provide a better assessment of how and why organisms and communities came to be as they are than is attainable without an explicit treatment of these dynamics.     

Electricity Intensity of Internet Data Transmission: Untangling the Estimates

In order to understand the electricity use of Internet services, it is important to have accurate estimates for the average electricity intensity of transmitting data through the Internet (measured as kilowatt‐hours per gigabyte [kWh/GB]). This study identifies representative estimates for the average electricity intensity of fixed‐line Internet transmission networks over time and suggests criteria for making accurate estimates in the future. Differences in system boundary, assumptions used, and year to which the data apply significantly affect such estimates. Surprisingly, methodology used is not a major source of error, as has been suggested in the past. This article derives criteria to identify accurate estimates over time and provides a new estimate of 0.06 kWh/GB for 2015. By retroactively applying our criteria to existing studies, we were able to determine that the electricity intensity of data transmission (core and fixed‐line access networks) has decreased by half approximately every 2 years since 2000 (for developed countries), a rate of change comparable to that found in the efficiency of computing more generally.     

A Systems Approach to Sustainable Technical Product Design

Many existing methods for sustainable technical product design focus on environmental efficiency while lacking a framework for a holistic, sustainable design approach that includes combined social, technical, economic, and environmental aspects in the whole product life cycle, and that provides guidance on a technical product development level. This research proposes a framework for sustainable technical product design in the case of skis. We developed a ski under the Grown brand, benchmarked according to social, environmental, economic, and technical targets, following an initial sustainability assessment, and delivered the first environmental life cycle assessment (ELCA) and the first social life cycle assessment (SLCA) of skis. The framework applies a virtual development process as a combination of ELCA to calculate the environmental footprint as carbon equivalents of all materials and processes and a technical computer‐aided design (CAD) and computer‐aided engineering (CAE) simulation and virtual optimization using parameter studies for the nearly prototype‐free development of the benchmarked skis. The feedback loops between life cycle assessment (LCA) and virtual simulation led to the elimination of highly energy intensive materials, to the pioneering use of basalt fibers in skis, to the optimization of the use of natural materials using protective coatings from natural resins, and to the optimization of the production process. From an environmental perspective, a minimum 32% reduction in carbon equivalent emissions of materials in relation to other comparably performing skis has been achieved, as well as a pioneering step forward toward transparent communication of the environmental performance by the individual, comparable, and first published ski carbon footprint per volume unit.     

From forest fires to fisheries management: Anthropology,conservation biology,and historical ecology

Human‐environmental relationships have long been of interest to a variety of scientists, including ecologists, biologists, anthropologists, and many others. 1 , 2 In anthropology, this interest was especially prevalent among cultural ecologists of the 1970s and earlier, who tended to explain culture as the result of techno‐environmental constraints. 3 More recently researchers have used historical ecology, an approach that focuses on the long‐term dialectical relationship between humans and their environments, as well as long‐term prehuman ecological datasets. 4 - 7 An important contribution of anthropology to historical ecology is that anthropological datasets dealing with ethnohistory, traditional ecological knowledge, and human skeletal analysis, as well as archeological datasets on faunal and floral remains, artifacts, geochemistry, and stratigraphic analysis, provide a deep time perspective (across decades, centuries, and millennia) on the evolution of ecosystems and the place of people in those larger systems. Historical ecological data also have an applied component that can provide important information on the relative abundances of flora and fauna, changes in biogeography, alternations in food webs, landscape evolution, and much more.     

Barriers to Industrial Symbiosis: Insights from the Use of a Maturity Grid

The concept of industrial symbiosis (IS) over the last 20 years has become a well‐recognized approach for environmental improvements at the regional level. Many technical solutions for waste and by‐product material, water, and energy reuse between neighboring industries (so‐called synergies) have been discovered and applied in the IS examples from all over the world. However, the potential for uptake of new synergies in the regions is often limited by a range of nontechnical barriers. These barriers include environmental regulation, lack of cooperation and trust between industries in the area, economic barriers, and lack of information sharing. Although several approaches to help identify and overcome some of the nontechnical barriers were examined, no methodology was found that systematically assessed and tracked the barriers to guide the progress of IS development. This article presents a new tool—IS maturity grid—to tackle this issue in the regional IS studies. The tool helps monitor and assess the level of regional industrial collaboration and also indicates a potential path for further improvements and development in an industrial region, depending on where that region currently lies in the grid. The application of the developed tool to the Gladstone industrial region of Queensland, Australia, is presented in the article. It showed that Gladstone is at the third (active) stage of five stages of maturity, with cooperation and trust among industries the strongest characteristic and information barriers the characteristic for greatest improvement.     

The application of strand invasion phenomenon,directed by peptide nucleic acid (PNA) and single‐stranded DNA binding protein (SSB) for the recognition of specific sequences of human endogenous retroviral HERV‐W family

The HERV‐W family of human endogenous retroviruses represents a group of numerous sequences that show close similarity in genetic composition. It has been documented that some members of HERV‐W–derived expression products are supposed to play significant role in humans' pathology, such as multiple sclerosis or schizophrenia. Other members of the family are necessary to orchestrate physiological processes (eg, ERVWE1 coding syncytin‐1 that is engaged in syncytiotrophoblast formation). Therefore, an assay that would allow the recognition of particular form of HERV‐W members is highly desirable. A peptide nucleic acid (PNA)–mediated technique for the discrimination between multiple sclerosis‐associated retrovirus and ERVWE1 sequence has been developed. The assay uses a PNA probe that, being fully complementary to the ERVWE1 but not to multiple sclerosis‐associated retrovirus (MSRV) template, shows high selective potential. Single‐stranded DNA binding protein facilitates the PNA‐mediated, sequence‐specific formation of strand invasion complex and, consequently, local DNA unwinding. The target DNA may be then excluded from further analysis in any downstream process such as single‐stranded DNA‐specific exonuclease action. Finally, the reaction conditions have been optimized, and several PNA probes that are targeted toward distinct loci along whole HERV‐W env sequences have been evaluated. We believe that PNA/single‐stranded DNA binding protein–based application has the potential to selectively discriminate particular HERV‐W molecules as they are at least suspected to play pathogenic role in a broad range of medical conditions, from psycho‐neurologic disorders (multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia) and cancers (breast cancer) to that of an auto‐immunologic background (psoriasis and lupus erythematosus).     

Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity: Forty Years of Evidence

The international industrial ecology (IE) research community and United Nations (UN) Environment have, for the first time, agreed on an authoritative and comprehensive data set for global material extraction and trade covering 40 years of global economic activity and natural resource use. This new data set is becoming the standard information source for decision making at the UN in the context of the post‐2015 development agenda, which acknowledges the strong links between sustainable natural resource management, economic prosperity, and human well‐being. Only if economic growth and human development can become substantially decoupled from accelerating material use, waste, and emissions can the tensions inherent in the Sustainable Development Goals be resolved and inclusive human development be achieved. In this paper, we summarize the key findings of the assessment study to make the IE research community aware of this new global research resource. The global results show a massive increase in materials extraction from 22 billion tonnes (Bt) in 1970 to 70 Bt in 2010, and an acceleration in material extraction since 2000. This acceleration has occurred at a time when global population growth has slowed and global economic growth has stalled. The global surge in material extraction has been driven by growing wealth and consumption and accelerating trade. A material footprint perspective shows that demand for materials has grown even in the wealthiest parts of the world. Low‐income countries have benefited least from growing global resource availability and have continued to deliver primary materials to high‐income countries while experiencing few improvements in their domestic material living standards. Material efficiency, the amount of primary materials required per unit of economic activity, has declined since around 2000 because of a shift of global production from very material‐efficient economies to less‐efficient ones. This global trend of recoupling economic activity with material use, driven by industrialization and urbanization in the global South, most notably Asia, has negative impacts on a suite of environmental and social issues, including natural resource depletion, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and uneven economic development. This research is a good example of the IE research community providing information for evidence‐based policy making on the global stage and testament to the growing importance of IE research in achieving global sustainable development.     

Material Flows and Economic Growth in Developing China

The concept of sustainable development concerns not only the natural environment but also human societies and economies. The method of economy‐wide materials flow accounting and analysis (EW‐MFA) is internationally recognized as a valuable tool for studying the physical dimensions of economies. EW‐MFA has been carried out in many industrialized countries, but very little work has been done for developing China; this article can be regarded as one of the first attempts to study China's economy in terms of materials flows. In this article we have compiled materials flow accounts for China during the time series 1990 to 2002 and derived indicators associated with international comparison. Results show that the annual material consumption of China's economy continuously increased except for a slump around 1998, whereas the material efficiency exhibited a three‐phase trend reflecting different macropolicies of the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Five‐Year Plans implemented by the central government. Based on this experience with EW‐MFA for China, suggestions for methodology development and further research are given for improving EW‐MFA as a more effective tool for environmental management.     

A Market‐Based Framework for Quantifying Displaced Production from Recycling or Reuse

The most significant environmental benefit of recycling or reusing a wide range of products and materials is typically the potential to displace primary material production; lack of displacement significantly reduces the environmental benefits of these activities. Because no consensus method to estimate displacement rate has emerged, environmental assessments have tended to assume that displacement occurs on a one‐to‐one basis. However, displaced production is a complex phenomenon governed primarily by market mechanisms, rather than physical relationships. This article advances the understanding of displacement by presenting a market‐based framework describing the displacement relationship and a methodology for quantifying displacement rate based on partial equilibrium modeling. Using this methodology, a general symbolic equation for displacement rate after an increase in recycling is derived. The model highlights the market mechanisms that govern displaced production and identifies five price response parameters that affect displacement rate. Results suggest that one‐to‐one displacement occurs only under specific parameter restrictions that are unlikely in competitive commodity markets, but zero displacement is possible if secondary materials are poor substitutes for primary materials; displacement is likely to be reduced if secondary materials have inferior technical properties. The presented methodology can be generally applied to any system in which recycled or reused materials are substitutes or complements for primary materials. Implications for improving recycling and reuse efficacy and environmental assessment methodology are discussed, and suggestions are presented for expanding the displacement methodology in future research.     

物质流分析（SFA）方法及研究进展

物质流分析(substance flow analysis,SFA)通过追踪经济-环境系统特定物质的输入、输出、贮存等过程,量化经济系统中物质流动与资源利用、环境效应之间的关系,为资源环境优化管理提供科学依据.系统阐述了SFA的内涵及发展历程,介绍了SFA方法体系,在此基础上对SFA研究现状进行了评述.分析表明,SFA是产业生态学领域内一种重要的产业代谢分析方法,它在污染物迁移路径追踪及环境影响分析、战略性资源生命周期代谢分析、物质社会存量分析等方面具有十分重要的应用价值.提出了SFA的未来应用领域和发展趋势.     

Generalized Make and Use Framework for Allocation in Life Cycle Assessment

Allocation in life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis is one of the long‐standing methodological issues in life cycle assessment (LCA). Discussion on allocation among LCA researchers has taken place almost in complete isolation from the series of closely related discussions from the 1960s in the field of input?output economics, regarding the supply and use framework. This article aims at developing a coherent mathematical framework for allocation in LCA by connecting the parallel developments of the LCA and the input?output communities. In doing so, the article shows that the partitioning method in LCA is equivalent to the industry‐technology model in input?output economics, and system expansion in LCA is equivalent to the by‐product‐technology model in input?output output economics. Furthermore, we argue that the commodity‐technology model and the by‐product‐technology model, which have been considered as two different models in input?output economics for more than 40 years, are essentially equivalent when it comes to practical applications. It is shown that the matrix‐based approach used for system expansion successfully solves the endless regression problem that has been raised in LCA literature. A numerical example is introduced to demonstrate the use of allocation models. The relationship of these approaches with consequential and attributional LCA models is also discussed.     

Longitudinal Analysis of the Eco‐Design Management Standardization Process in Furniture Companies

This article discusses how eco‐design management standards have been adopted and the environmental and economic results that have been obtained by the Spanish furniture manufacturers. This is precisely the industry sector in Spain where the dissemination of eco‐design standards has been most important. Using multiple case‐study methodology, the research has shown that, in three companies, more than 90% of the environmental impact of the companies’ products occurs within the manufacturing phase. Companies have implemented tools for life cycle assessment with eco‐indicators values that allow them to assess complex products and evaluate their significant environmental impacts at each stage. The environmental strategies of these companies are based on the continuous improvement of the internal processes and the review and monitoring of their activities. In this approach, the proper choice of materials and the environmental management of the supply chain are the main problems for companies. The outcomes achieved by the companies included some improvements, such as a greater control of product management and a reduction in operating costs, that have allowed them to obtain competitive advantages. Moreover, the adoption of standard management has enabled the companies to drive innovation of products, improve the image of companies and their products, significantly reduce the environmental impact of their products, and adapt to new, more demanding environmental laws and regulations.     

Industrial Waste Reuse and By‐product Synergy Optimization

By‐product synergy is a growing practice worldwide. It consists in the maximization of resources utilization with the replacement of raw materials by by‐products as inputs for industrial processes. In order to support decision making in such strategic projects, appropriate tools must be developed. This article presents the results of a research project, which includes the development of a multiobjective mathematical programming model for the optimization of by‐product flows, synergy configurations, and investment decisions in eco‐industrial networks. This model is evaluated using data related to the Kalundborg industrial symbiosis (IS) in order to illustrate its utilization, as well as to assess, in a retrospective manner, the behavior of the companies involved with respect to both economic and environmental benefits of synergies. The experiments also illustrate the influence of the municipality on synergy implementation and how a scenario‐based approach can be used to anticipate raw material price increase. The results are generally coherent with the actual timing of synergy initializations. Further, the considerable effect of water price on the length of investments’ payback period illustrates the impact of policies and regulations on IS.