Industrial Metabolism

Technology in the United States. Johns Hopkins University environmental quality the concept offers an analytical Press, Baltimore framework that is practically motivated to improve Landes D 1969 The Unbound Prometheus. Cambridge University the quality of the natural environment through Press, London changes in industrial and social norms. Lazonick W 1991 Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy. Cambridge University Press, New York Industrial metabolism examines the exchange of Lo$ sch A 1954 The Economics of Location, 2nd edn. Yale materials and energy between human society and University Press, New Haven, CT nature at all spatial scales, applying the same analytical Marshall A 1997 Principles of Economics. Prometheus Books, parameters to describe material fluxes within and New York between natural and human systems. At the largest McCraw T 1986 America Versus Japan. Harvard Business scale this includes study of anthropogenic con- School, Boston tributions to atmospheric concentrations of trace gases Rosenberg N, Birdzell L 1986 How the West Grew Rich. Basic and the flow of excess nutrients from agricultural Books, New York activities to water bodies. At smaller scales, industrial Samuels R 1994 Rich Nation, Strong Army, National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan, 1st edn. metabolism addresses the use of resources in the Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY human economy through the development of Schoenberger E 1997 The Cultural Crisis of the Firm. Blackwell, resource-accounting frameworks for political and Cambridge, MA economic entities as well as life-cycle analyses of the Storper M, Walker R 1989 The Capitalist Imperatie. Blackwell, materials used in the manufacture of industrial and Oxford UK consumer products. Weber A 1971 The Theory of the Location of Industries. Emphasis is placed on following the ‘material flow’ Atheneum, New York from its origins (e.g., mined ore) through the industrial processes used for its transformation, to the products A. K. Glasmeier that contain it, and finally to its disposal or re-entry into the industrial system. At its most comprehensive, industrial metabolism links to human and ecosystem metabolism, for instance by considering the life cycle of metals and organic chemicals in plant tissue and the Industrial Metabolism human diet. The information is used to construct a ‘materials balance’ of a system and draw conclusions The word ‘metabolism’ comes from the Greek, mean- regarding the actions needed to improve the environ- ing to change or transform. The concept in biology mental character of its metabolism. Possible indicated describes the combined effect of numerous biochemi- actions might include industrial process change, prod- cal reactions that convert the materials in a living cell uct substitution, consumer education, government to provide for its growth and maintenance. While the regulation, development of enabling technologies, concept of metabolism is uniformly accepted at the installation of new resource recovery capacity, and cellular level and for individual organisms, its ap- economic incentives by government (see Global En- plication to larger systems of living organisms or ironmental Change: Human Dimensions). human societies remains underdeveloped. The term To determine existing and potential metabolic ‘industrial metabolism’ derives from the notion that pathways, industrial metabolism considers the social industrial economies, like biological organisms or dynamics that influence the integrity of the natural natural ecosystems, can be understood as systems for environment. To establish quantitative relationships material transformation with distinct metabolic path- between material flows and social dynamics, industrial ways that evolve over time. Industrial metabolism metabolism compares indices of industrial production offers a useful perspective for the study of collective and social consumption to social and demographic human behavior and its effect on the materials cycles variables such as population, gender, age, land use, that comprise the workings of the natural environ- and economic activity. To aid in the formulation of ment. public policy, industrial metabolism bases its findings Social analyses have considered industrial pro- in the context of government institutions, economic duction and resource-use statistics as social indicators incentives, and cultural biases that influence the flow since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. In the of physical resources and their impact on the natural decades since the 1960s, industrial metabolism has environment. been used as a paradigm to describe the exchange of materials among industrial operations in a way anal- ogous to the description of material and energy 1. Natural History of Chemistry balances in natural ecological systems. This metabolic analysis contributes to the formulation of techno- One main thrust of research in industrial metabolism logical, economic, and policy instruments aimed at compares the natural history of the basic biogeo- addressing social environmental concerns. In the chemical reactions observed in planetary evolution context of modern social and political awareness about and contemporary ecosystems with those employed by

7331 Industrial Metabolism industrial society. By studying the basic chemical also generally follow a series of linear discrete trans- processes observed in nature for achieving beneficial formations (i.e., unit operations) in contrast to the transformations of materials, this inquiry seeks to more continuous processes found in nature. In ad- identify industrial processes that minimally perturb dition to learning from the design of natural systems, global biogeochemical cycles and least interfere with industrial metabolism seeks to identify, and engineer, the services provided to humans by nature. natural processes to replace commercial ones and thus From a historical perspective, the Earth represents reduce human resource use and waste generation (see an evolved system for recycling materials. Over geo- Greening of Technology and Ecotechnology). logical periods the planet has allowed for the biogeochemical feedback necessary to arrive at a state hospitable to human life over the majority of the 2. Resource Accounting globe. Characteristic of this evolution is the natural system’s ability to find uses for discarded by-products. A complementary thrust of industrial metabolism For instance, at the planetary scale we find the research explores the actual physical flow of materials development of organisms using photosynthesis to within industries and regions. Materials-flow analyses produce energy. The life-forms employing this process rely on the law of conservation of mass (i.e., no new came to dominate a planet rich in atmospheric oxygen, mass is created or destroyed in a closed system) to the waste product of previous life. This system provide a complete materials balance equating the attribute, a product of evolution, is also evident over quantities identified as inputs with those labeled as shorter timescales in natural ecosystems. For these outputs. Employing the materials balance principle systems, scientists describe a complex web of life allows for estimation of material flows in industrial supported by the wastes from animals and plants, and consumer products as well as in by-products and identifying the significance of those wastes as pro- wastes even when data are missing. The analysis may viding the basic nutrients for regeneration. include material flows apparent to the public, for Industrial metabolism notes that in selected in- example in household wastes, as well as the hidden stances the need to find uses for waste products drives material flows occurring in mines, quarries, power the evolution of processes used in human industry. plants, factories, farms, and disposal sites. For example, the search for uses for unwanted coal tar Because both large- and small-scale flows have an led to the birth of the synthetic dye industry at the impact on the environment, industrial metabolism beginning of the twentieth century in Western Europe. examines bulk materials, typically measured in Natural gas, a leading energy source at the end of the millions of tons, as well as toxic materials measured in twentieth century, was once ‘flared’ at wellheads micrograms. Large-scale flows such as hydrocarbon before its value was recognized for energy and com- fuels used to supply energy, and fixed nitrogen used for mercial products from nitrogen fertilizer to synthetic food production, have an impact on global biogeo- rubber. Chlorine entered the human environment chemical cycles that govern climate and ecosystems. initially as a by-product from the manufacture of Smaller volume flows that enter the human food chain sodium chemicals and eventually became the far more may pose chronic or acute threats to human health marketable product. Following the evolutionary prin- and threaten the biological balance found in natural ciple evident in natural, as well as human, systems, ecosystems. industrial metabolism seeks to reveal opportunities The industrial metabolism of any material must be for using waste materials from contemporary indus- determined within the boundaries of a defined system. trial systems (see Sustainability Transition: Human– Once within system boundaries, flows must also cross Enironment Relationship). an internal boundary in moving from ‘nature’ to the Industrial metabolism stipulates that resource use ‘human’ domain in order to be included in the account. and waste generation can be avoided if human industry Geographically based analyses examine the industrial can learn from the design models found in nature and metabolism of material sources and sinks formed by overcome the barriers to replicating natural systems industrial, agricultural, and urban activity, and the for material transformation in human industry (see surrounding environment. Analysts can also map Industrial Ecology). One of the most basic differences material flows for individual facilities or entire sectors, between natural and human-made systems derives provided that they consistently define how to evaluate from the fact that natural systems are driven by solar indirect material flows occurring outside the sector energy in its different forms, which contrasts with under study. Finally, the material itself may provide human energy production as a relatively diffuse spatial the boundary, if the effort calls for improved under- source. The intensive use of energy to generate standing of its metabolism independent of other conditions of high pressure and temperature for associated flows. human production processes further distinguishes Criteria for including materials in the metabolic human from natural metabolic processes that typically analysis range from narrowly restrictive to broadly occur under conditions of ambient pressure and inclusive. Some account only for those material flows temperature. Human-made material transformations associated directly with economic transactions. Other

7332 Industrial Policy frameworks include hidden material ﬂows such as Stigliani W M, Anderberg S 1992 Industrial Metabolism at the mine tailings from metal production, overburden Regional Leel: The Rhine Basin. International Institute for removed to access coal seams, and eroded soil from Applied Systems Analysis, WP-92-10, Laxenburg, Austria agricultural land. Still other accounting frameworks tabulate the translocation of dirt and rock for infra- I. K. Wernick structure such as road building and harbor dredging. Industrial Policy

3. Future Deelopment Industrial policy is an approach to economic policy in Several factors motivate contemporary interest in which the state gives direct support to particular firms industrial metabolism as a framework for analyzing and industries. Since the modern state has a pervasive the environmental impact of human economies. Re- influence on economic activity, virtually every industry search aimed at developing operating industrial econ- is influenced by its actions. Even general codes omies that do not damage the natural environment, typically have a differential impact upon particular benefit from the study of how natural systems are able firms and industries. There is thus a sense in which to operate without permanently depleting natural every industry is shaped by state action and when the resources or damaging life-support systems. Resource state acts in a deliberate and purposive way to affect accounting offers a compact and transparent method the fate of an industry, either on its own behalf or in to convey environmental information to government response to pressures from the industry itself, one can officials, resource managers, and industrial operators speak of industrial policy in the generic sense of the term. The term might be extended still further to refer whose decisions influence environmental quality. \ Challenges to industrial metabolism include the to cases where a lead enterprise, and or an employer need to refine methods for materials-flow analysis to association, pursues a strategy for the industry as a counter limits in the ability of government and whole. But we generally reserve the term for what industry to monitor all environmentally important might be called industrial policy in the large. This is an materials streams. Far more work needs to be done in approach in which particular firms and industrials are the realm of environmental science to establish causa- supported in pursuit of national economic policy goals. tive relationships between human emissions and dam- Such policy is generally conceived in terms of a broader age to the environment. Finally, the inescapable plan, or strategy, of national economic development. influence of specific geographical and cultural features Instruments of support range from tariff protection on human–environment interactions requires models and import restrictions, tax concessions, subsidies, of individual and collective behavior to describe and and targeted services to direct intervention through improve environmental quality at the local level where institutions of the state itself, including the state’s own humans reside and interact with one another. research and development laboratories, state schools and universities and state-owned enterprises. Indeed, industrial policy is a major justification for the state to See also: Ecology, Political; Environment and Devel- undertake these activities directly on its own account. opment; Environment Regulation: Legal Aspects; Industrial policy in this larger sense was practiced Environmental Change and State Response; Environ- widely in the early postwar decades, although the term mental Policy; Human–Environment Relationship: itself seems to date from the 1970s, when this approach Indicators; Sustainable Development to national economic development became the subject of a widespread debate. In more recent decades industrial policy has fallen out of favor, so much so that the term has taken on a pejorative connotation. Bibliography Its proponents have tended to use various euphemisms Ayres R U, Simonis U E (eds.) 1992 Industrial Metabolism. and circumlocutions, although one is hard pressed to United Nations University Press, Tokyo point to a particular word or phrase that has taken its Ayres R U, Schlesinger W H, Socolow R 1994 Human impacts place. These changes reflect a major shift in the on the carbon and nitrogen cycles. In: Socolow R, Andrews C, intellectual and political climate of the late postwar Berkhout F, Thomas V (eds.) Industrial Ecology and Global period. In some ways, the climate has now shifted back Change. Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 121–56 once again in favor of an industrial policy, although Fischer-Kowalski M 1998a Society’s metabolism: The intel- one which is understood and practiced very differently lectual history of materials flow analysis, part 1: 1860–1970. from that of the early postwar decades. Journal of Industrial Ecology 2: 61–78 Fisher-Kowalski M 1998b Society’s metabolism: The intellectual In the first few decades after World War II, among history of materials flow analysis, part 2: 1970–1988. Journal the advanced developed countries the leading practi- of Industrial Ecology 2: 107–36 tioners of industrial policy were France and Japan. In Frosch R A 1996 Toward the end of waste: Reflections on a new France, the postwar policy was associated with the ecology for industry. Daedalus 125: 199–212 Commissariat du Plan (The Planning Commission)

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