Eco-Industrial Parks (EIP)

Indigo Development introduced the concept of eco-industrial parks (EIP) to pollution prevention staff at
the US-EPA in 1993. The Agency then embodied this concept in an Environmental Technology Initiative
project, which led to the President's Council on Sustainable Development adopting EIPs as demonstration
projects in 1995. By early 2005 communities in the US, Asia, Europe, South America, and Africa have
initiated EIP or other eco-industrial development planning processes. The Circular Economyinitiative in
China has made it a principle strategy for multiplying efficiency of resource use. 

In our Eco-Industrial Park Handbook for Asian Developing Countries (download it)  we have updated the
concept and strategies and incorporated cases from Asia.  (This work was supported by the Environment
Department of the Asian Development Bank.) We now define the EIP concept as:

"An eco-industrial park or estate is a community of manufacturing and service businesses located
together on a common property. Member businesses seek enhanced environmental, economic, and social
performance through collaboration in managing environmental and resource issues. By working together,
the community of businesses seeks a collective benefit that is greater than the sum of individual benefits
each company would realize by only optimizing its individual performance.

"The goal of an EIP is to improve the economic performance of the participating companies while
minimizing their environmental impacts. Components of this approach include green design of park
infrastructure and plants (new or retrofitted); cleaner production, pollution prevention; energy efficiency;
and inter-company partnering. An EIP also seeks benefits for neighboring communities to assure that the
net impact of its development is positive."

Communities and businesses that  create eco-industrial parks will have a foundation for industrial
development that is more competitive, more efficient, and cleaner than traditional industrial parks. In
addition, new business niches will be opened for recruitment or incubation of new companies.
A grindstone hole along the Tule River in California
where members of the Yaudanchi Native
American tribe ground acorns into meal.
Benefits of EIPs 

Communities embracing the EIP concept are seeking benefits

for all public and private stakeholders.
 Business derives cost savings and new revenues;
shared services; reduced regulatory burden; and
increased competitiveness.
 The community enjoys a cleaner, healthier
environment; business and job development; an
attraction for recruitment; and an end to conflict
between the economy and the environment.

 Government receives increased tax revenues;

reduced enforcement burden; reduced costs of
environmental and health damage; and reduced demand on municipal infrastructure.

 For the environment there is reduced demand on finite resources; decreased local and global
pollution; increased use of renewable energy and materials; and an overall renewal of natural
systems.
Strategies for Designing an Eco-Industrial Park

Several basic strategies are fundamental to developing an EIP or industrial ecosystem. Individually, each
adds value; together they form a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Integration into Natural Systems

Design the EIP in harmony with the characteristics and constraints of local ecosystems; 
Minimize contributions to global environmental impacts, i.e. greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy Systems

Maximize energy efficiency through facility design or rehabilitation, co-generation (the capture and use of
otherwise wasted heat from the electrical generating process), and energy cascading (the use of residual
heat in liquids or steam from a primary process to provide heating or cooling to a later process: steam
from a power plant, for example, is used in a district heating system); 
Achieve higher efficiency through inter-plant energy flows; and 
Use renewable sources extensively.

Materials Flows and "Waste" Management for the Whole Site

Emphasize pollution prevention, especially with toxics; 

Ensure maximum re-use and recycling of materials among EIP businesses; 
Reduce toxic materials risks through integrated site-level waste treatment; and 
Link the EIP to companies in the surrounding region as consumers and generators of usable byproducts
via resource exchanges and recycling networks.

Water

Design water flows to conserve resources and reduce pollution through strategies similar to those
described for energy and materials.

Effective EIP Management

In addition to standard park service, recruitment, and maintenance functions, park management does the
following:

 Maintains the mix of companies needed to best use each others' by-products as
companies change; 
 Supports improvement in environmental performance for individual companies and the
park as a whole; 

 Operates a site-wide information system that supports inter-company communications,

informs members of local environmental conditions, and provides feedback on EIP
performance.
Construction/Rehabilitation

New construction or rehabilitation of existing buildings follows best environmental practices in materials
selection and building technology. These include recycling or reuse of materials and consideration of
lifecycle environmental implications of materials and technologies.

The first pioneers who are developing eco-industrial parks are applying previously tested concepts and
practices in an innovative whole system. You can find the separate components of the EIP vision working
effectively in industry today. In some cases (energy efficiency in new process, equipment, and plant
design, e.g.) there is an obvious contribution to competitive advantage. Many of these "new" approaches
are becoming best business practices. Many of these ideas are simply applied common sense:
Why pay money to create a product you can't sell, call it a waste, and pay someone to dispose of it?

Why not use the energy of the sun and wind when you locate a building and design its heating and
cooling systems?

Challenges of EIP development and critical success factors 

There are national projects to develop new eco-industrial parks or to tranform existing parks in China,
Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam and many smaller projects in other Asian, European, and Latin American
countries, as well as the projects in North America and Australia.  One
major issue in EIP planning
and development is that some players definite it in very narrow terms as "companies
utilizing each others' 'wastes' or by-products." The one advantage of this limited
definition is that it is easy to explain. In too many cases this tactic is not feasible and
fails to achieve the full benefits of a an EIP developed according to our more systemic
definition. See our paper, prepared for the Chinese State EPA, discussing the value of a
more holistic approach and some of the major obstacles we have observed in EIP
projects. 

While working with the Korean national EIP initiative, Indigo's team defined critical
success factors for that project that are generally applicable. 

Shanghai EIP Cases 

Indigo collaborated with the Sustainable Development Institute, Tongji University, in conducting two case
studies in Shanghai, one of Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park and the second of Shanghai Caohejing Hi-
tech Park. These cases may be downloaded as MS Word files. They both illustrate many of the challenges
just noted.