Industrial Ecosystems as Food Webs

Abstract

Colocated industries exchange products and by‐products in ways reminiscent of the exchange of resources in biological ecosystems. To better understand these “industrial ecosys‐tems”, we have applied food‐web theory to a set of 19 actual and hypothetical eco‐industrial parks and integrated biosys‐tems. We find a linear relationship between number of industrial tenants and number of linkages among them and connectance values of 0.5 to 0.6 (typical of biological ecosystems). The results may provide initial perspective on designing eco‐industrial parks to maximize the utilization of resources and minimize the generation of wastes. Increased connectance in industrial ecosystems, however, does not necessarily imply increased stability or improved environmental performance.