Abstract
The term green industry derives from the Green Plan introduced in 1989 by the then Canadian Minister of the Environment. The plan intended coordination between economic development and environmental protection and integration of eco-friendly values into socioeconomic development by injecting the green idea the macroscopic socioeconomic development plan. The Green Plan was adopted by 12 industrialized countries in the early 1990s and developing green industries became an important strategy in countries that wanted to achieve socioeconomic sustainability because of their important in implementing the Green Plan. A series of sustainability oriented concepts emerged later on, including green industry, environmental industry, environmental protection industry, cleaner production, green product, and green marketing. The definition of green industry has continued evolving throughout this process. The breadth, stratification, and changing nature of the green industry concept has prevented a unified definition, leaving it ambiguous in both intension and extension. It is further ambiguous because it overlaps with many similar concepts and ideas. Different countries and international organizations and bodies understand the concept differently based on their individual needs and characteristics.
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© 2016 Social Sciences Academic Press (China) and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Zhang, Y., Lu, J. (2016). Green Industrial Cities. In: Li, J., Yang, T. (eds) China's Eco-city Construction. Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48153-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48153-0_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-48152-3
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