Eco-Innovation in the transition to a circular economy: an analytical literature review

In order to conserve natural environments, the Circular Economy (CE) is considered as a suitable way to carry out the transition from current economic models to models of a more sustainable nature. From the biological perspective however, industrial systems are generally inefficient. Manufacturing systems from the biological perspective therefore require the incorporation of tools to support decision making, thereby enabling organizations to improve their functions and competitiveness in a global and integrated perspective. Accordingly, at meso level, eco-industrial parks are gaining importance as an approach towards ensuring CE. In this work, an ontological framework for CE, based on industrial metabolism, is developed as the technology for information and knowledge models to share the circularity of resources through industrial ecosystems, based on ecological, economic, and social criteria. The ontology developed is modelled using Ontology Web Language and integrated in an architecture based on bio-inspired Multi-Agent Systems (MAS). Moreover, a quantitative method, Ecological Network Analysis, is incorporated into MAS knowledge to analyze and establish relationships and metabolic pathways between companies, which can increase the circularity of technical nutrients and reduce biological nutrient extraction. The integrated model is applied to a case study on the product life cycle for the establishment of its metabolic pathway through an eco-industrial park. The subsequent incorporation of MAS thereby establishes the Smart Eco-Industrial Park.

Smart eco-industrial parks: A circular economy implementation based on industrial metabolism

Industrial symbiosis (IS) employs a cross-organizational perspective to seek synergistic pairings of one company's waste output to another company's input, enabled by interfirm cooperation through resource and information sharing. Orchestrating IS relationships among companies, however, remains a complex process. In the literature, a wide range of qualitative and quantitative tools have emerged, tackling issues ranging from identifying IS creation opportunities to performance evaluation. Thus far, the available literature has focused on separate aspects and perspective of IS creation. Each individual work contributes, in part, to the overall process of IS creation. The disparate perspectives provided by the literature reflect the fragmented nature of available tools supporting IS, which operate in isolation of each other. An encompassing view of tools supporting the process of IS creation is missing to date. Therefore, to fill this gap, this study aims to develop a more comprehensive description of the landscape of IS tools by analyzing the associated approaches, roles, and contribution of existing tools. Through this understanding, the insights gained can be used to aid future development and advancement of tools for IS practitioners.

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X. Bimi

Papers

An ontological approach towards enabling processing technologies participation in industrial symbiosis