Article Database

Island Waste Management Systems

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Island waste management professionals are faced with limited land resources, high energy costs, large seasonal fluctuations in waste volumes, and complex social and political dynamics that stem from their often closely knit societies. These and other factors can discourage typical waste management practices, but they also provide opportunities for island governments and businesses to explore alternative technologies and policies that suit their particular circumstances and that might be environmentally preferable. This critical review discusses the waste management literature on islands to date, including several industrial ecology (IE) studies. Common advantages and disadvantages faced by island waste management challenges are presented from the perspectives of business and municipal management. Waste generation data are presented from more than 40 islands around the world and tested for correlation with economic and geographic parameters and using cluster analysis, with the aim of identifying trends among island types. Poor data quality and comparability are ongoing challenges that underscore the potential benefits of a consistent program of island waste management data collection. Finally, the review explores opportunities for applying IE research to generate useful insights and policies in the areas of material flow analysis, industrial symbiosis, life cycle assessment, and social ecology.

Industrial Symbiosis and Waste Recovery in an Indian Industrial Area

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Assessing the “Short Mental Distance” in Eco‐Industrial Networks

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Like many economic exchanges, industrial symbiosis (IS) is thought to be influenced by social relationships and shared norms among actors in a network. While many implicit references to social characteristics exist throughout the literature, there have been few explicit attempts to operationalize and measure the concepts. The “short mental distance,”“trust,”“openness,” and “communication” recorded among managers in Kalundborg, Denmark, set a precedent for examining and encouraging social interactions among key personnel in the dozens of eco‐industrial networks around the world. In this article we explore the relationships among various aspects of social embeddedness, social capital, and IS. We develop a conceptual framework and an approach using quantitative and qualitative methods to identify and measure these social characteristics, including social network structure, communication, and similarities in norms and conceptions of waste, and apply them in an industrial network in Nanjangud, South India. The findings suggest that there is a fairly high level of shared norms about dealing with waste—the “short mental distance”—in this network, but by‐product transactions are only weakly correlated with the structure and content of communication among managers. Replication of this approach can increase the understanding and comparability of the role of social characteristics in eco‐industrial activities around the world.

The Structure, Function, and Evolution of a Regional Industrial Ecosystem

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A framework has been developed to assess the structure, function, and evolution of a regional industrial ecosystem that integrates insights from industrial ecology and economic geography dimensions with complex systems theory. The framework highlights the multilayered landscape of natural ecosystem functions, economic transactions, policy contexts, and social interactions in which interfirm collaboration evolves. Its application to a single case study on the island of Puerto Rico revealed changes in the system’s institutional context, its resource flows, and the composition of its industrial community. It illustrated that external forces and interactions among actors at multiple levels can cause permanent changes—but not necessarily system collapse—as policy choices and interfirm cooperation can be used to organize resources in ways that retain system functionality.

From Cleaner Production to Sustainable Development: the Role of Academia

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Cleaner Production (CP) strategies are fundamentally concerned with operations, environmental sustainability and maximization of waste reduction, recycling, and reuse at the enterprise level, and are thus microeconomic in scope. Sustainable development (SD), however, involves the design of integrated approaches that are capable of addressing environmental sustainability and waste while ensuring social and economic prosperity at the national or even global level implying a macroeconomic scope. Due to its philosophy, broad scope and long-term horizons, sustainable development necessitates capacity building via advancement of sustainable societal patterns and the creation of a new set of visions, paradigms, policies, methodological tools and applicable procedures. The first and foremost step on this path is the development of human capital required to make such a transition. This paper proposes the application of a methodology via which leaders in higher education could assess the necessity and the urgency for designing training programs that could assist with developing human capital needed to support SD. The methodology evaluates the conditions and constraints that could control the effectiveness and ease of implementation of such programs. At its core, the proposed methodology utilizes expert judgment to assess importance of including CP and SD indicators listed in the questionnaire on the proposed academic programs. During a pilot study which was conducted in the fall of 2013 at selected universities in the USA, Latin America, and China, experts evaluated a series of proposed CP-infused academic programs according to a matrix consisting of SD indicators, and under consideration of the norms, culture, political systems, regulations, resource availability, and local, regional and global economic development goals and objectives. Results of data analysis in the pilot study suggested that inclusion of the resource management (RM) topics in designing academic programs is the most preferred approach in all three different regions, followed by development of programs that could cover topics in areas of human capital development (HCD), human system designs (HSD) and sustainable economic development and prosperity (SEDP). Quantitative analysis of the data indicated existence of two clusters of preferences for CP–SD criteria: one for in the Americas (including Latin America) and one for China.

Industrial Symbiosis in Puerto Rico: Environmentally Related Agglomeration Economies

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Chertow M. R., Ashton W. S. and Espinosa J. C. Industrial symbiosis in Puerto Rico: environmentally related agglomeration economies, Regional Studies. Industrial symbiosis, a sub-field of industrial ecology, examines the flow of water, energy, materials, and by-products across firms in geographic proximity. Environmentally related co-location benefits often result that have not been a focus of traditional agglomeration economies, but extend the basic theory. This paper conceptualizes the relationship between agglomeration economies and industrial symbiosis, finding that many negative environmental externalities can be reduced while increasing production efficiency. Four industrial regions of Puerto Rico, all with agglomeration economies, but only two with significant industrial symbiosis, highlight the contribution of symbiosis and how it can influence both static and dynamic agglomeration economies.

Understanding the Organization of Industrial Ecosystems

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Industrial symbiosis (IS) has been used to describe the physical exchange and shared management of input and output materials by geographically proximate firms. Firms that engage in IS are said to belong to an industrial ecosystem. Symbiosis has been found to be motivated by economic considerations, such as lowering costs for waste disposal, as well as by environmental ones, such as accessing limited water supplies. Communication and trust among managers are thought to play important roles in exchanges; however, empirical studies have not been previously conducted. This study used social network analysis (SNA) to identify the prevalence of industrial symbiosis linkages in Barceloneta, Puerto Rico. The study quantified patterns in various relationships among firms and managers, including formal relations through supply chains, and informal ones through interpersonal interactions. SNA and statistical methods were used to explore how these ties correlate with observed industrial symbiosis activities. IS linkages were found to be less prevalent than product sales among firms and were concentrated among pharmaceutical firms at the core of the regional network. Trust among managers and position in the social hierarchy were found to be correlated with IS but not supply chain links. SNA was useful for examining the organization of different relationships in the industrial ecosystem, but contextual information is still needed to add meaning to its findings.

No AccessWalk access to neighbourhood parks: evaluating availability, quality and connectivity

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Poor pedestrian infrastructure and road connectivity can deter people from walking to local parks. Using data from the ground observation of sidewalk and Google Earth, research was undertaken to evaluate the fundamental accessibility features of the built environment such as sidewalk availability and quality as well as connectivity. The study analysed road network density, availability and quality of sidewalks within a neighbourhood park’s buffer area, and sidewalk connectivity by using a ‘sidewalk availability and quality index (SAQI)’ and ‘connectivity index’. The SAQI recognises that access is dependent on the pedestrian’s ability to use the road network surrounding a neighbourhood park, whereas the connectivity indexes identify the access disparities among crossroads, T-junctions and dead-end and looping road segments, by assigning weights to represent the level of walk access. Together the indexes provide insight into the pedestrian’s ability to access and use parks through the built environment. This method is demonstrated through the analysis of ten neighbourhood parks in San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. Using the analysis, this study identifies actual measurement of walkability of neighbourhoods surrounding local parks and proposes possible walk access solutions.

When the Wait Seems Longer: Assessing Quality Attributes of Bus Stops

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The presence or absence of certain bus stop attributes plays a great part in the desirability of a bus service. This research is an assessment of 403 bus stops around the city of Los Angeles, chosen through cluster sampling and compared against the Bus Stop Quality Index (BSQI) the authors developed, an index comprised of various attributes which affect bus stop quality. Data were collected using a field checklist, and each stop was scored based on its cleanliness, amenities, accommodations, and surrounding characteristics. The analysis includes bus stop quality identification with an accompanying indexing system, statistical analysis, and a mapping technique using Geographical Information System (GIS). The results of the study show that ridership variables have a direct link with bus stop quality, and indicate that while municipalities keep making pushes to increase transit ridership and decrease reliance on the private automobile, improving bus stop quality will help not only better serve regular bus users, but to attract new users as well.

Demand Responsive Route Design: GIS Application to Link Downtowns with Expansion Areas

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The movement of residential locations to suburban areas to obtain cheaper land results in increasing mobility and infrastructure problems. One of the important infrastructures is transportation, which determines the level of accessibility of people and commodities from one place to another. Therefore, Transportation Demand Management (TDM) measures are important in providing an optimal transit route to increase accessibility of public transportations. In the past, several researchers have developed various TDM programs, including public transport improvement as a strategy to encourage a more transit-oriented society. This study attempts to create a methodology of identifying bus links between urban centers and newly developed urban expansion areas using Geographical Information Systems by considering reduction of route overlapping. A TAZ-based analysis is undertaken to identify the demand responsive bus routes, which maximize population coverage, minimize travel time, and reduce duplicating routes.