Industrial ecology’s first decade

Abstract

Industrial ecology can be said to have begun with a 1989 seminal publication entitled “Strategies for Manufacturing.” During the next decade, the field was initially defined and developed by researchers in industry and elsewhere who saw the opportunity for improving corporate and governmental performance related to the environment and sustainability. They introduced design for environment, industrial symbiosis, and resource use and loss assessments at national and global levels and enhanced the embryonic specialty of life-cycle assessment. In the same decade, industrial ecology became widely recognized as a scholarly specialty, with its own journals and conferences. This chapter reviews industrial ecology’s emergence and evolution, largely from a North American perspective, with emphasis on the field’s lesser-known first decade.