Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology is a field of study concerned with analyzing the interactions between humans and the environment that takes a broad, long-range view to the analysis of industrial systems and views them in a manner analogous to an ecosystem. It draws from both systems engineering and ecological principles, and is particularly useful in addressing concerns such as sustainability at a systems level. Industrial ecology studies the flow of materials and energy through industrial systems, and aims to develop ways to design, produce, use, recycle, and dispose of products in order to optimize the use of resources and energy while minimizing any environmental impacts. In this period of diminishing natural resources and global climate change, and industrial ecology can provide a pathway toward a sustainable society.

One of the current problems faced by modern society is the generation of a wide variety of hazardous by-products in its industrial production. During most of humankind's existence on Earth, small, widely scattered groups of people have had little impact on the planet's service systems for providing food and recycling waste. Simple dwellings, small trails, and small, spatially diverse harvests left virtually no footprint. However, in the last several thousand years, human population has increased to a point of modifying natural environmental systems. Since the industrial revolution, and especially during the 20th century, human society built structures, such as megacities, that demanded extreme levels of product production, increasing the hazardous by-products that are discharged into the atmosphere and water. These changes mean that people can no longer take the relationship with the natural environment for granted, and one hope of industrial ecology is that it can provide a basis for a more sustainable and manageable technological society, and allow humans to live in harmony with other species and with their surroundings, ensuring the habitability of the earth for an indefinite period.