Is Industrial Ecology a New Science?

It is important to realise the fundamental nature of the shift of environmental issues from overhead to strategic for consumers, producers and society, which is the essence of sustainability. As professionals, as industry, as society, we have yet to recognise the challenge posed by this shift, or how profound our ignorance really is. It is not an insult to current research efforts in such areas as design for environment (DfE) or life-cycle assessment (LCA) to say that we know almost nothing yet about sustainability. The research necessary to support such change has really not yet begun in earnest. Two examples might be useful to illustrate this point. There is much discussion about ‘sustainable communities’ and ‘sustainable companies’. If, as is likely, sustainability is an emergent characteristic of a properly self-organised complex system—that is, the global economic structure—these terms are oxymoronic: sustainability is a property ofthe whole, and not of the parts. The terms are useful in that they indicate a generic goodwill towards the environment. To a scientist, however, they beg the question. One must begin by asking: what is the physical and energetic basis of the community or firm in question? What stocks and flows of materials support the community? What is the linkage between these processes and supporting natural systems? What are the environmental impacts embedded in products and materials imported into the communities, which have the effect of exporting the community’s impact around the world? How do differentcommunities compare along these dimensions? Although some sporadic, high-level work has been done on these issues, the real task has yet to be begun. If a manufacturer were to ask a designer to design a ‘green telephone’, she would of coursesay yes, as few are actively against the environment. 103Her firstquestion, however, would be: ‘what are the preferred materials for the various applications?’ Such data do not now exist. If one cannot answer even such a simple, reasonable question, how far are we, then, from understanding sustainability?.