Development of an industrial ecology toolbox for the introduction of industrial ecology in enterprises—I

Industrial Ecology (IE) is an emerging concept for the promotion of environmentally sound manufacturing and consumption. It aims to balance industrial development with the sustainable use of natural resources. This paper proposes a framework for the comparative analysis and evaluation of methods used for the practical implementation of IE in enterprises. The IE tools are organised in a toolbox since it is envisioned that, once the framework has proven to be valuable for the evaluation of past IE activities in enterprises, it may also be of use for the planning of new IE activities in different industrial enterprises. The tools are to enable enterprises to organise their IE efforts, to identify, evaluate and implement environmental improvements in their processes and products as well as in the production chains and industrial sites they are part of, and to evaluate progress in reducing environmental impacts. In this paper, a division into four functional types of tools is made: inventory tools; improvement tools; prioritisation tools; management tools. For each category of tools, several example tools are given. The inter-relatedness of the functional types of tools is briefly addressed and illustrated with practical experiences from the manufacturing industry. It turns out that the limited normalisation of IE tools could act as a barrier for the widespread application of IE. The application of the toolbox for the comparative evaluation of IE tools may catalyse the development of effective tools and generate insight into their most powerful applications. Such insight is in turn needed to use the toolbox for planning of future IE activities in enterprises.