DAVID CROCKETT, a descendant of the famous frontiersman, looks out across the
south central business district of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Most people see
nothing more than a patchwork quilt of decrepit buildings, derelict lots and
weeds breaking up car parks. But not Crockett. In his eyes, this abandoned
“brownfield” is the new Wild West, a frontier screaming to be opened up.
Or rather, reopened. For three decades ago Chattanooga was a mighty
manufacturing centre that produced jobs, and pollution, by the tonne. So many
tonnes, in fact, that in 1969 it helped earn Chattanooga the dubious title of
America’s most polluted city.
Today, Chattanooga would like the jobs back but not the pollution. And
Crockett, a Chattanooga city councilman, believes they have a revolutionary
scheme which will do that. “You can hear the grinding of gears as we shift
paradigms—we are on the verge of sustainability,” he says cheerfully.
Advertisement
Crockett points to the huge, crumbling frame of an old steel foundry. He
would transform it into a crystal palace, a solar-powered “living machine” for
wastewater treatment. Next door would be a soap factory that uses only recycled
wastewater, courtesy of the crystal palace, and next to that, another factory,
hungry for the by-products of soap manufacture.
Indeed, what Crockett envisions is a whole network of industries, each
efficiently feeding off another’s by-products to eliminate waste and pollution,
like organisms honed by natural selection to exploit the different niches of an
ecosystem. Emissions won’t just be curbed to an acceptable level, they’ll be
banished completely.
Industrial ecosystems
Using biological principles, Chattanooga is aiming to build one of the
world’s first “zero emissions” industrial parks. And judging from the high
attendance at the Second World Congress on Zero Emissions, held in Chattanooga
and over the Internet at the end of May, thousands of companies, government
officials, scientists and engineers from around the globe hope to follow in the
city’s steps. “Industrial ecosystems” based on the Chattanooga approach are
already being planned in Canada, Namibia, Fiji, the US-Mexico border region, the
Netherlands and Indonesia.
And next week, when city planners and environmentalists from all over the
world gather in Istanbul for what should be the largest ever conference on urban
development, Chattanooga’s efforts won’t go unnoticed. The Appalachian city of
200 000 people, which once symbolised industrial pollution on a massive scale,
is one of only 12 in the world to be honoured by the UN for its “best practices”
in sustainable development.
Behind the enthusiasm for zero emissions is a philosophy known as industrial
ecology. In ecosystems, materials flow cyclically from producers (plants) to
consumers (animals) and are recycled by decomposers (fungi, microbes) and
scavengers (vultures, hyenas and so on). Everything is put to use and the
concept of waste is meaningless. In human industries, by contrast, materials
move in a linear fashion from manufacturer to consumer and then straight into
the air or into a dump. “Waste” is essentially a human invention.
But proponents of industrial ecology believe it is time to make waste
obsolete by “closing the loop”. That requires industries to recycle more
resources, use raw materials to the full and create as few unwanted by-products
as possible. It also demands a shift in thinking. Products need to be seen not
as the end of the line, but as temporary embodiments of materials.
One entrepreneur who has started to implement such ideas is Gunter Pauli,
organiser of the Second World Congress and director of the United Nations
University Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI) based in Tokyo. Pauli is
also the founder of the Belgian company Ecover Products, which makes
chlorine-free bleach, environmentally benign dishwashing liquid and other
“green” cleaning products using recycled wastewater. He sums up the spirit of
the Second World Congress: “Time has come for us not to expect the earth to
produce more; time has come for us to do more with what the earth produces.”
Fine words, but critics contend that the eco-industrial park is the
brainchild of philosopher-idealists. Most business executives are concerned with
getting a stable supply of materials of consistent quality and will resist being
stuck with by-products from the guy next door.
Wrong dimension?
“The cost to businesses of insisting on geographic proximity may be very
high,” says Brad Allenby, research vice president technology and the environment
for AT&T. Eco-industrial parks, he says, may be “focusing on the wrong
dimension”. It’s far more important that companies retain the ability to do
business with anyone in the world and that they focus on redesigning their
products to be reusable and recyclable.
Even among academics and environmentalists, a lively debate has erupted over
whether local exchange of by-products is the best way to cut waste. Many
environmentalists are concerned that eco-industrial parks may inadvertently
deter companies from cutting pollution at its source. “The way you get to zero
emissions is not by finding a way to use chlorinated wastewater, but by getting
the chlorine out of the water using other alternatives,” says Jackie
Prince-Roberts, a chemical engineer at the Boston office of the Environmental
Defense Fund, based in New York.
More fundamentally, engineers point out that “zero” is not a number that
works in the real world. Nature’s ecosystems are powered by the Sun, while we
burn fossil fuels. And that, inevitably, produces greenhouse gases including
carbon dioxide. The difficulty of eliminating or recycling such emissions means
that there will always be some pollution and waste—even with renewable
energy sources such as solar power, which invariably depend on equipment made by
burning fossil fuels.
And while the goal of zero emissions is certainly a great motivator, there’s
no guarantee that companies will be able to pursue this goal to the very end.
“We’ve been picking the low-hanging fruit—the simple but important
housekeeping improvements in industrial plants—but we haven’t yet
developed the next generation of more sophisticated, demanding and elegant
chemical technologies to reduce formation of undesirable by-products,” says
Sheldon Friedlander, a chemical engineer at the University of California at Los
Angeles. Those technologies won’t come cheap and will take years to develop.
Many companies simply won’t be prepared to make the long-term investment.
For now, though, “zero emissions” manufacturing is catching on fast. Reducing
waste has so far proved profitable for the companies involved. And besides, it
creates good public relations.
In the late 1980s, the global chemicals corporation Du Pont adopted a zero
emissions goal to beat the high cost of waste disposal and keep ahead of
tightening environmental regulations. By 1994, the company had cut its discharge
of cancer-causing air pollutants by 70 per cent and slashed the amount of
plastics it discards by 25 per cent, according to Du Pont officials.
Carpets to car parts
“Zero emissions is an environmental concept, but it’s also a terrifically
powerful business concept,” says Paul Tebo, vice-president of Du Pont’s safety,
health and environment division. Du Pont now sells low-grade nylon by-products
for use as stuffing for teddy bears. And last year in Chattanooga, it opened a
carpet reclamation plant which processes about 450 000 kilograms of used carpet
every month. The recovered nylon is sold and sent off to be made into car parts,
while the fibres are used to keep soil embankments from sliding. By 1998, the
recovered nylon will also be converted into virgin-quality nylon for making new
carpets. The loop will be closed.
Xerox has also taken a step toward closing the loop, dramatically redesigning
its office products in the process. The company has been taking back its old
photocopiers since the 1960s, but could not always refurbish them in its
overflowing warehouses. In 1990, it redesigned the machines, replacing screws
and welding with snap-together pieces and making the parts inside more durable.
Now the machines can easily be taken apart, cleaned and the parts tested so that
they can be reused in new machines.
Performance vs product
Essentially the company sells the service of guaranteed performance, rather
than a completely new product, says James MacKenzie, director of environment,
health and safety at Xerox. This change saved the company $4.2 million in
1995.
Spurred on by a recent hike in the cost of raw materials, the Japanese are
also eager to start closing the loop: some fifty corporations have now
established zero emissions divisions. Indeed, some companies around the world
claim they have not only “seen the light” but are already approaching zero
emissions for certain manufacturing processes.
Take what happened to Masterack, a division of Missouri-based industrial
group Leggett & Platt, in the mid-1980s. Masterack, which is based in
Atlanta and makes shelving and display racks, fell foul of the law for emitting
hazardous fumes while painting its metal racks. But those days ended when it
gave up solvent-based paints. Now the company sprays the racks with a
powder-based coating and puts them into a curing oven, where the coating melts
and hardens. There are no fumes, particulates or by-products. And any excess
powder that falls to the floor is vacuumed up and reused.
Of course, individual companies tinkering with their manufacturing processes
and product designs is not the only, and perhaps not the best, way to cut waste
and boost efficiency. After all, one person’s junk is another’s treasure. That’s
why Chattanooga wants different companies to cluster at the same site, sharing
resources and swapping by-products.
This kind of “industrial symbiosis” may sound idealistic, but in fact it’s
already happening. Numerous chemical, petrochemical and energy production
facilities along the ship channel in Houston, Texas, swap by-products with one
another, says Ernie Lowe, an anthropologist and expert on eco-industrial parks
with Indigo Development in Oakland, California. “There may be many more
examples,” says Lowe, “but the individual facilities aren’t aware of the larger
pattern.” And that means they cannot exploit it to the full.
Economics and environment
The same is not true of Kalundborg in Denmark. In this seaside town of 10
000, everyone knows about industrial symbiosis, including schoolchildren. A
coal-fired power station pipes steam heat—which would normally be lost
energy—to an oil refinery, a drugs company and to the town. Additional
recovered heat goes to a nearby fish farm. Gypsum created in the power plant’s
scrubber is sold to a local plasterboard manufacturer, which also uses the
refinery’s light gas, normally burned off as waste, to fire its ovens for drying
the wallboard. The refinery pumps its cooling water to the power plant for use
in cleaning and as boiler feedwater. Organic sludge from the fish farm and drugs
company, where microbes are cultured, provides fertiliser for farmers’
fields.
“These links look great because they’re environmentally friendly, but
actually every single one occurred because it was economically viable for the
companies,” says Nicholas Gertler, who studied Kalundborg for his master’s
thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Indeed, to make these
connections possible, an extensive system of pipelines had to be built. The
investment proved worthwhile, but it took 25 years for the network to evolve.
Can industrial ecosystems be designed and put in place more quickly?
Yes, says Robert Ayres, an expert on industrial development at INSEAD,
France’s top business school, in Fontainebleau—but “it would take some
kind of godfather to make it happen”.
By godfather, Ayres means something like a big and powerful chain store or a
large automobile manufacturer which sets up shop next to the suppliers and
service companies it works with. Or a billionaire who decides to become a
champion of eco-industrial parks.
So far, however, it’s local government which has taken on the godfather role.
Now it faces the daunting challenge of actually designing industrial ecosystems.
In Chattanooga, for instance, the community has chosen a site—the
brownfield downtown. But important legal and technical obstacles remain. What if
a firm went bust or changed its process and the by-products it generated?
Stability and change
To create the stability of a natural ecosystem and be capable of evolving,
Chattanooga’s industrial ecosystem will need biological-style redundancies, so
that one broken link won’t cripple the entire network, says Ray Cote of
Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. That means multiple sources of
supply and demand will be needed, and multiple materials that can serve the same
purpose will need to be available.
Chattanooga must now decide how tightly to link the companies—and their
survival—with one another. And that must be worked out before the city
begins the complex task of recruiting and selecting businesses that could
feasibly work together.
In Brownsville, Texas, the community is starting off by trying to identify
potential players in an industrial ecosystem. “We’re trying to get an idea of
what is already thriving in Brownsville and whether some pieces in the puzzle
are missing,” says Michelle Feenstra, an engineer at Texas A & M
University’s extension service in College Station.
Feenstra is leading an effort to gather information from 50 local companies
and 100 other manufacturers on their raw materials, by-products, energy and water
uses, heat loss, physical size and general requirements. If all goes well, the
data will be entered into a computer program which will identify potential
collaborations between industries. How many companies will sign up, however,
remains to be seen. The big sticking point for some will be the unavoidable need
to volunteer information about their operations.
Brewery boon
Information the burgeoning industrial ecology does need, expensive new
technologies it does not—at least, not now. That’s why some developing
countries say that they too want to work toward the goal of zero emissions. At
the Second World Congress, George Chan of the UN University’s ZERI programme
reported on two zero-emissions projects in Lami, Fiji and Tsumeb, Namibia. Both
will show how the by-products of a brewery—spent grains, yeast sediment
and wastewater—can be used to raise livestock and fish, fertilise crops,
produce gases for fuel and substrate for growing mushrooms.
“The brewery’s organic wastes are all recycled,” says Chan. “And no new
technologies are needed.” According to Chinese researchers, such systems for
brewing (a booming business in the developing world) could produce up to seven
times more food, fuel and fertiliser using the same amount of raw materials, and
up to four times more jobs.
So why aren’t such complexes sprouting like mushrooms? ZERI’s Pauli says many
people find it difficult to envision systems, rather than linear mechanical
set-ups. And companies are accustomed to focusing on a “core” business strategy
that prevents them from considering other opportunities—”You’re a beer
producer, not a mushroom grower,” says Pauli. But ZERI hopes to change those
attitudes with a series of courses round the world that began in April. Leaders
in Brazil, Indonesia, Tanzania and other countries are beginning to look into
zero emissions production of palm oil, sugar, sisal and paper, says Pauli.
In developed countries as well, new thinking requires encouragement.
“Far-sighted companies do exist, but they won’t go too far without government
support,” says Ayres. “The public and the government needs to push them.” For
example, the “take-back” law in Germany makes manufacturers responsible for
disposing of the packaging they create, which has given them an incentive to
find innovative ways to reduce and recycle their packaging.
People in communities like Chattanooga will no doubt play a leading role in
the industrial ecology movement. “The growth pattern we’ve had in cities is not
economically sustainable—the road to prosperity was paved with asphalt and
it created a high cost of living and a low quality of life,” says Councillor
Crockett, pondering history and looking over the brownfield ruins. “In
Chattanooga we’re going to reverse that trend. But we have no more charts to
guide us than Magellan had when he set sail. So we’re making the maps.”
* * *
A home for orphan chemicals
Vince Purcell is a scavenger. In the 1980s, he noticed that the chemical
companies he worked for were paying a pretty penny to dispose of their
by-products. And yet the chemicals in question were not hazardous and could
potentially be reused by somebody.
“I saw a need for a company that would take in these products—orphan
chemicals—and bring them to a secondary market,” Purcell says. He started
his own company, Houston-based VP Resources, in 1988 and not only found homes
for the orphans, but discovered that the secondary markets for by-products were
large enough to make it a profitable business.
Purcell was perhaps the first entrepreneur to fill the niche of a chemical
scavenger. By finding uses for chemicals that would otherwise be dumped or
incinerated, Purcell’s company formed an important, and often missing, link
needed to “close the loop” in industrial ecosystems.
Now there are about fifty others in the US which have entered the business of
chemical by-product recycling, says Purcell. And every week many advertise in
the Chemicals Wanted section of Chemical Marketing Reporter. “It has
really caught on now,” he says.
Purcell continually looks for new orphan chemicals—his company
specialises in liquids—and for new customers that could use them. When he
finds a match, he negotiates a deal. Producers are wooed by the prospect of
eliminating their cost of disposal, and Purcell also pays them something for the
by-products. Buyers agree to purchase the stream from Purcell once they see that
the orphan chemicals can do the same job at less cost than virgin materials.
For instance, Purcell buys tank trucks full of a toluene-hexane mixture from
one chemical manufacturer, and sells it to a company that uses it to make yellow
and white paints for marking road lines. He also buys propylene glycol from a
large American airport, where it is used to de-ice airplane wings.
Because the law requires water discharged into the sewers to be free of the
chemical, the airport built a facility to remove propylene glycol from their
wastewater. (The law also forbids its reuse for de-icing airplane wings.)
Purcell sells the recovered propylene glycol to a company that makes antifreeze
for recreational vehicles to keep vacationers’ pipes and potties flowing during
the cold season.
Why don’t companies sell their own surplus chemicals and by-products instead
of dumping or burning them? Purcell, who has worked in the chemicals industry
for 40 years, says that many see that as going against the traditional strategy
of focusing on a single core business. Moreover, manufacturers of virgin
chemicals have no interest in competing with themselves by selling less-than-
pure orphans.
So that leaves plenty of opportunities for by-product recyclers. “We take
pride that we’re contributing to the improvement of the environment,” says
Purcell, “but we’re also helping the chemical companies, because every one of
them has orphan chemicals they don’t want to bother with.”
