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Industrial ecosystem indicators—direct and indirect effects of integrated waste- and by-product management and energy production

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Abstract

In an idealised industrial ecosystem (IE), firms and organisations utilise each other's material and energy flows including wastes and by-products to reduce the system's virgin material and energy input as well as the waste and emission output from the system as a whole, and contribute to sustainable development (SD). IE complements the more conventional individual flow, product, process, organisation, individual actor or sector-focused environmental management approaches and tools with network or systems level approaches. The first research objective of this paper is to construct indicators for IE. The second task is to test the use of these indicators with "what if?" material and energy flow scenarios for the energy and waste system of Satakunta region in Finland including 28 municipalities. Using literature analysis as a source, we arrive at environmental indicators of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalents, and at economic indicators of fuel, energy and waste management costs and revenues. The social indicators show the employment effects of the waste management system. The scenarios analyse the current situation (0-scenario) against alternative situations in the future. The future scenarios are developed according to the known and anticipated trends in international and national policy and legislation. The indicator application in the scenarios produces social, environmental and economic effects of waste management in four categories: direct negative, direct positive, indirect negative and indirect positive. Industrial ecosystem theory emphasises the utilisation of wastes as a resource with value alongside the objective of reducing waste. Therefore, the indirect positive effects of waste management are important, as well as the conventional focus of waste management, which has usually been on direct positive effects. The main difficulties in our argument are the system boundary definition, the qualitatively different nature of environmental, economic and social effects and indicators as well as the lack of qualitative or interview data on the preferences and interests of the actors involved.

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Notes

  1. Frosch and Gallopoulos 1989; Graedel and Allenby 1995; Erkman 1997; Ehrenfeld and Gertler 1997; Ehrenfeld 2000; Korhonen 2000; Korhonen 2001a; Korhonen et al. 2001. For a review, see den Hond (2000) or Chertow (2000).

  2. These references are the first use of the IE concept found by the authors and are much earlier than the most often cited and influential piece by Frosch and Gallopoulos (1989).

  3. Materials are collected mainly from secondary sources, i.e. from existing statistics (Statistics Finland, Finnish agricultural register TIKE, Finnish district heating statistics, VAHTI waste material database and Fennica database), research cooperation partners (energy agency PrizzTech) and from literature (see e.g. AEA 2001; Eunomia 2001; RPA 2001; Tuhkanen 2001; Pipatti et al. 1996; Nieminen and Isoaho 1994).

  4. Bingemer and Crutzen 1987; Tuhkanen 2001; AEA 2001; IPCC 2001a, 2001b; Vehkalahti and Hämekoski 2001.

  5. Average transportation distances for agricultural biowaste and wastewater treatment sludge are based on measurements and average distances between the municipal centres determined from geographical information systems (GIS) (Finnish Road Administration 2003, http://www.tiehallinto.fi)

  6. The LIPASTO transportation model is a calculation system for traffic exhaust emissions and energy consumption (Technical Research Centre of Finland, http://lipasto.vtt.fi)

  7. The first order decay method produces a time-dependent emission profile that reflects better the pattern of waste degradation process than the mass-balance method used in this study (IPCC 2001b).

  8. We value the discussion with Dr. Fredrik von Malmborg in an IE workshop in Stockholm on 22 February 2003.

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  1. Jouni Korhonen

    Present address: University of Joensuu, Department of Economics, C/O Kalevi and Jouni Korhonen Ammattikoulunkatu 10. B. 1 33230, Tampere, Finland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Joensuu and SCC Viatek Oy, Finland

    Jouni Korhonen, Lasse Okkonen & Ville Niutanen

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  1. Jouni Korhonen
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Correspondence to Jouni Korhonen.

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Korhonen, J., Okkonen, L. & Niutanen, V. Industrial ecosystem indicators—direct and indirect effects of integrated waste- and by-product management and energy production. Clean Techn Environ Policy 6, 162–173 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-003-0234-7

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