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The principle underlying by-product synergy is that one industry's waste stream can be used by another as a primary resource. It is a simple idea, but one which has enormous potential for reducing waste volumes and toxic emissions to air and water, as well as cutting operating costs.
In order to facilitate an exchange of materials and resources, businesses need to work together to determine what unwanted by-products exist, and what their potential applications are. The resources can then be exchanged, sold, or passed free of charge between sites, creating a by-product synergy.
By-product synergy has been defined by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the US Environmental Protection Agency as 'the synergy among diverse industries, agriculture, and communities resulting in profitable conversion of by-products and wastes to resources promoting sustainability'.
By-product synergy is the principle which underpins the concept of 'industrial ecology' - a holistic view of industry in which organizations exchange energy and material between one another, rather than operating as isolated units. Industrial ecology promotes a shift away from traditional open, linear systems towards closed loops and inter-dependent relationships of the kind found in nature.
The Industrial Ecosystem Development Project
To date, the best known demonstration of industrial ecology is in the Danish industrial town of Kalundborg (see case study). However, a recent study by the US Environmental Protection Agency suggests that the potential for exploiting by-product synergies among co-located industries may be substantial.
The aim of the two-year 'Industrial Ecosystem Development Project' was to identify potential by-product partnerships in an industrialized area of North Carolina, encompassing Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. The area identified is much larger than Kalundborg, with a population of around one million, and is dominated by pharmaceutical, computer, and telecommunications equipment manufacturers.
A target list of 343 facilities was drawn up, all of which were large and had been involved in pollution prevention programmes in the past. All were contacted and invited to take part in the study, and 182 agreed.
A geographic information system (GIS) was used to map the various sites and to record (i) the by-products arising there, and (ii) what inputs they required. The aim was identify 'matches' between nearby sites.
As a result of this exercise, potential partnerships were proposed for almost half of the 182 sites under investigation. Out of a total of 49 different by-products identified, 12 were deemed viable for short-term partnerships, namely acetone, carbon, desiccant, hydrochloric acid, methanol, packaging, plastic bags, sawdust, sodium hydroxide, wood ash, wood chips and wood fluff.
A further 24 by-products were identified for which partnerships could be developed with further effort, including copper, electricity, floppy disks, glass fibre, ink, plastic and wire.
In one instance, a company which used vermiculite as a packaging material realized that it could use waste sawdust from a furniture shop directly across the street - waste material that would otherwise have been landfilled. In another, it was found that nearly 5,000 truck miles a year could be saved by taking unwanted acetone to a local business that could use it, rather than to a hazardous waste facility 150 miles away.
A report on the two-year experiment, published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, concludes that the main obstacle to industrial ecology is the absence of a 'champion' to bring the various industries together. 'What is lacking in most communities is an agent to promote the vision of a web of materials, water and energy flowing between neighbours, and to gather the local information about by-products available or raw material requirements needed to build this web,' it says.
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