Eco Parks & Environment

Industrial ecologists are championing eco-industrial position or EIPs as tools for pursuing sustainable nurture. An EIP is a community of companies located in one region that exchange and induce use of individually otherwises by-products or efficacy. Among the outstrip known is Kalundborg, Denmark, a city in which the major industries and the local g everywherenment dole out their expend streams and energy resources. Many commentators visit Kalundborg as a model that should be copied and improved upon. Imagine what a aggroup of pictureers could come up with if they were to start from scratch, mending and specifying industries and factories that had potentially synergistic and symbiotic relationships, writes capital of Minnesota Hawken (1993, 63), author of The Ecology of Commerce. Ernest A. Lowe (1997, 58) points out that trance industrial ecosystems must be mostly self-organizing, there is a significant function for an organizing team in educating potential particip ants to the opportunities and in creating the conditions that support the development. Because of this enthusiastic endorsement, numerous EIPs subscribe been planned in North and atomic number 16 America, Southeast Asia, Europe and Southern Africa (Ayres 1996 indigo seed down Development 1998 Gertler 1995 Lowe 1997). Kalundborg, a small city on the island of Seeland, 75 miles west of Copenhagen, is so an impressive example of a cycle network.In this city of 20,000, the four main industriesa coal-fired power plant (Asn?s), a refinery (Statoil), a pharmaceuticals and enzymes maker (Novo Nordisk), a gypsum board manufacturer (Gyproc), as well as the municipal government and a a couple of(prenominal) smaller businessesfeed on each others wastes, in the process turning them into reusable inputs. The Asn?s power party supplies equaliser steam to the Statoil refinery and, in exchange, receives refinery gas that use to be flared as waste. The power plant burns the refinery gas t o generate electricity and steam.It sends excess steam to a weight farm that it operates, to a district passion system serving 3,500 homes, and to the Novo Nordisk plant. Sludge from the weight farm and pharmaceutical processes becomes fertilizer for nearby farms. The power plant sends fly ash tree to a cement company, while gypsum produced by the power plants desulfurization process goes to a company that produces gypsum wallboard. Finally, the Statoil refinery removes sulfur from its natural gas and sells it to Kemira, a sulfuric acid manufacturer. However, consultants id not design, nor did danish pastry government officials finance, Kalundborgs industrial symbiosis. It was, rather, the result of some(prenominal) separate bilateral deals between companies distinct to reduce waste treatment and government costs and to gain access to cheaper materials and energy while generating income from production residue.Kalundborg, like other similar examples, developed entirely finis hed commercialize forces (Garner and Keoleian 1995 Gertler 1995 Lowe et al. 1996 Schwartz and Steininger 1997). Today, there is still no higher level of administration managing the interaction of Kalundborg companies and local government. Lowe 1997, 59). Jorgen Christensen, a spokesperson for Novo Nordisk, notes I was asked to speak on how you designed Kalundborg. We didnt design the whole thing. It wasnt designed at all. It happened over time (Lowe 1995, 15). This establish shows that the movement toward cosmos planning of eco-industrial parks rests on a misreading of the Kalundborg experience. Kalundborg is not unique however rather is characteristic of industrial loops that cities look at fostered for hundreds and even thousands of years.To assume that EIP planners can simulate and improve upon Kalundborg reflects insufficient knowledge of how commercialise forces have historically promoted resource recovery. This essay compares private and public mechanisms in the devel opment of industrial loops and illustrates how regulation of hazardous waste in the United States currently thwarts such(prenominal) industrial symbiosis. The essay concludes by competition that greater reliance on market forces would be the most effective mien of replicating the Danish experience.