ABSTRACT
Industrial ecology has been defined by Graedel and Allenby (1995) as “… the means by which humanity can deliberately and rationally approach and maintain a desirable carrying capacity, given continued economic, cultural and technological evolution. The concept requires that an industrial system be viewed not in isolation from its surrounding systems, but in concert with them.” The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Electronics and the Environment Committee (1995) has defined industrial ecology as “… the objective, multidisciplinary study of industrial and economic systems, and their linkages with fundamental natural systems.” Tibbs (1992) describes industrial ecology as follows: “… industrial ecology involves designing industrial infrastructures as if they were a series of interlocking manmade ecosystems interfacing with the natural global ecosystem”. And O’Rourke et al. (1996) characterize industrial ecology as “… bringing systems thinking in ecology together with systems engineering (for design of products and processes) and economics”
While much of the literature on industrial ecology suggests that it originated in the early 1990s, Erkman (1997) and O’Rourke et al. (1996) trace its roots back to the early 1970s. One thread of development, which has been largely overlooked, can be traced to the Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. In the early 1970s, Koenig, and later his son and their students at Michigan State, in collaboration with Chandrashekar and his students at the University of Waterloo, Canada, developed analytical tools, based on systems theory. These tools are used to analyze and design engineering systems so that they are as efficient and effective as possible, while minimizing their environmental impact. These tools are more sophisticated than any this author has seen in the industrial ecology literature. (Koenig and Tummala 1972; Koenig et al. 1972, 1975; Wong 1979; Wong and Chandrashekar 1982; Chinneck 1983; Chinneck and Chandrashekar 1984; Koenig and Tummala 1991; Tummala and Koenig 1993; Saama et al. 1994; Koenig and Cantlon 1998, 1999).
