ABSTRACT
In the early stages of industrialization, innovation was focused primarily on improving the productivity of personnel and capital assets. Lack of access to capable workers often hindered industrial growth, particularly in the New World. Industrial innovations required considerable inputs of concentrated energy to drive their productivity. Since labor access was limited, businesses needed to find alternative sources of energy to increase their productivity. The mining and timber industries grew dramatically to feed the demand for raw materials and energy while lands were cleared and developed to expand agricultural production. Early industrial systems tended to be wasteful because they functioned through an inefficient and unbalanced linear flow of inputs and outputs. Raw materials entered the systems while products and wastes exited. By the latter half of the 20th century, the complex mix of hazards, wastes, and emissions associated with dysfunctional industrial systems had grown to levels that society could no longer ignore.
