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In 1959 in the city of Kalundborg, Denmark a power station was built. Other kinds of plants were put in that same area, and along the way someone got the idea to start sharing resources simply because it would be cheaper and more efficient. Now, waste heat from the power plant goes to heat greenhouses, fish farms, and 3500 homes, steam goes to a refinery and a pharmaceutical plant, fly ash goes to cement manufacturers, and scrubber sludge goes to a drywall manufacturer. The refinery sends their cooling & waste water and fuel gas back to the power station, their sulfur to an acid plant, and some of their waste heat goes to greenhouses. Treated sludge from the pharmaceutical plant goes to neighboring farms as fertilizer. This collaboration saves these companies about $15 million dollars every year, and has been dubbed “Industrial Symbiosis”. The Kalundborg Eco-Industrial Park has become a model for how to integrate different industrial processes together to share resources to benefit not only all of the companies, but also homes and farms in the area.

The examples of waste products from one company or manufacturing process being used as the input for some other manufacturing process, such as in the Kalundborg Eco-Industrial Park, are encouraging and inspiring, and if we want to reach a truly circular economy we need to try to emulate this model as much as possible. One of the difficulties in doing so is that this particular model requires facilities to be in close proximity to each other, but given the sheer number of different kinds of industries and manufacturing that can happen, facilities aren’t always going to be able to be in close proximity to other facilities or industries that they could possibly have industrially symbiotic relationships with. How can we promote both the development of Eco-Industrial parks like Kalundborg, and also more long-distance cross-industry participation and exchange of resources of that kind? How can an industry in one sector even know what material and resource streams might come from the waste products of other industries? A manufacturer in one industry might have multiple particular kinds of waste streams, but it might be that only people extremely familiar with that industrial process would even know that those waste streams exist. Also, someone in another industry might not even know exactly what those materials are, or what they might be able to be used for. What is needed is a method of communication that not only allows those in other industries to see that these waste streams exist and are available, but can also show them what that waste might be useful for. I’m imagining something online that is part forum and part marketplace. Industries that have waste available can post that waste on there, whether an ongoing stream, or a limited quantity. It might be some waste product from an industrial process that they currently have to pay to send to a landfill. It might even be waste heat or steam, or it might be construction materials from building deconstruction projects. The list is probably almost endless. Along with what the material is, the listings would ideally also contain the properties of the materials, for example strengths like tensile or load bearing capacity, or compressibility, heat resistance, amount of reactivity with certain types of other materials or material classes, etc. People in other unrelated industries might not be familiar with all of the materials that might be posted, but if they can search by the types of properties they are looking for, they will be able to find materials they never would have thought of, but which will nonetheless suit their particular needs. In a similar way, companies that have linear inputs that they would like to find circular replacements for can post their circular material needs. They can post the materials that they would like, but they would also post the technical requirements and properties that they need, in case someone might have materials that would fulfill the requirements that might be different than what the manufacturer was expecting. An AI tool could be integrated with the site to auto generate the material properties, based on the materials/dimensions/etc, and information about the industry they are coming from. AI might also be utilized in bringing up search results. Purchasers and R&D/engineers would search through these listings on a regular basis, looking for circular materials to fulfill their company’s needs, and they would make posts about those needs they still require circular materials for. In a similar way they would post about their own waste materials and streams that other companies might be able to make use of, and maybe search other companies’ posts about needs that their waste materials might be suitable for.

It’s possible that there may even be companies that start up to create an entire sub-industry that is all about finding materials that fulfill needs and connecting those companies together. They could constantly scour the material needs on the site and check other posts and other company contacts who are perhaps not even on the site to find ways of fulfilling those needs, connecting material waste streams up to companies that need them.

Of course proximity is still an important factor as the further materials have to travel, the more inefficient it is, and the greater the carbon emissions will be for the transport, etc. The site would need to prioritize materials by distances from the place where they are needed. Ideally you would want to source materials from your own city, then from your county, state/province, country/region, etc. The further the materials have to travel, the lower the overall benefits as far as sustainability goes, and the more expensive they will be, especially in areas with carbon taxes.

This tool would even help in establishing other examples of the kind of industrial symbiosis demonstrated at Kalundborg. How? When researching suitable locations for manufacturing or other industrial facilities site planners could use the map and AI features of the site to search for locations in cities or regions in close proximity to as many available sources of their needed resource streams as possible. It might be material streams, heat, steam, ash, or a million other possibilities. For example, you might search for locations in Chicago within 3 miles of a source of excess steam and fly ash. Or, a site somewhere in Ohio within 1 mile of sources of municipal sludge and waste heat.  This tool could allow them to find a list of locations and even contact the companies that have those resource streams available to start discussions.

Another side to this is deconstruction.  Buildings or other type of structures can be deconstructed, or taken apart, instead of demolishing them, so the materials recovered can be used in new construction, manufacturing, or other processes. Everything from structural materials such as steel beams to ornamental features such as marble or wood trim to functional items such as plumbing fixtures could be removed from the structures being deconstructed and utilized in new construction projects. Materials such as the wood framing from old houses could be sent to furniture manufacturers, for example.  The recovered materials can be posted on the site so that construction companies, manufacturers, or other types of industries can make use of those materials.  As soon as the company doing the deconstruction gets the contract, they can immediately start doing an inventory of the materials that will be available and post them on the marketplace months or years before the deconstruction happens so other companies can find them, contract to purchase them, and plan their own schedules accordingly. Ideally they could be taken straight from the deconstruction job over to the site where they are needed, whether a construction site or a manufacturing facility. Perhaps the schedule of the new construction can be aligned to coincide with the delivery of the highest volume of incoming deconstructed material. A large construction company might also have a deconstruction division which could become one of the principal suppliers of the construction division. That would make scheduling easier and would cut down on the costs of buying from dealers.

Obviously, as with the Kalundborg example, there are certainly monetary benefits to sharing materials and other outputs, but in order to really jumpstart this there should also be tax incentives, subsidies, or other government incentives such as grants to promote early participation in this.

The long-term goal is, of course, to move towards a circular economy. The more materials we throw into landfills, the more materials and energy resources we need to use to make new products; the more mines we need to open, the more oil wells, the more forests get cut down, the more damage and contamination we do to the planet we live on and the environment that sustains us. The more we throw into landfills, the more we contaminate the soil and groundwater, and generate methane and carbon dioxide emissions from decomposition. If, rather than letting almost everything we make end up in landfills, we take those materials and reuse them to make other stuff that we need, we can vastly lower the amount of new materials we need to extract, and vastly lower the carbon emissions that we pump into the atmosphere.

My first guess is that this marketplace / forum would probably need to be a government undertaking, in order to make it fair, and not controlled by any one industry or set of corporations, and in order for the fair use of government incentives to encourage participation. It could be a valuable way for companies to collaborate and save money and materials, and it would be a good method in helping us move towards a circular economy. It would help us in the fight to curb climate change, and a good way for us to preserve the natural wonders and resources of this beautiful world we inhabit.

by Eric Sparks, 2024