Industrial Ecology as an Integrated Framework for Business Management

Abstract

Growing global concerns about a plethora of environmental and social problems related to working circumstances, health, safety and inequity have currently fostered sustainability approaches for industry. Sustainable industrialization has emerged as a new strategic trend for facilitating socio-economic benefits without impairing basic environmental quality. This change in paradigm has led to a new concept in industrial sector called “Industrial Ecology (IE). Based on a straightforward analogy with the natural ecology, IE aims at transforming open linear industrial systems towards closed, cyclical independent systems. With a multidisciplinary scientific approach and many practical tools and strategies, it addresses various cross cutting themes related to pollution and environment and the entire spectrum of issues that are involved in the management of enterprises. The delineation of various concepts synthesized in this paper reveal a largely untapped potential of IE as a promising integrated framework for managing industrial practices.

Keywords: Industrial Ecology, Sustainability, Integrated framework, Business, Management? Corporate Environmentalism, Waste.