ABSTRACT
Brad Allenby, Vice President of AT&T, has written and spoken widely on industrial ecology, which is about putting the ‘eco’ into industry as well as into eco-nomics. A father of the industrial ecology field, Dr Allenby is again at AT&T after a stint as Director, Energy and Environmental Systems at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, USA, where he was in charge of a $250 million research programme. The interest of large government and industrial organisations in industrial ecology is clearly high. Is industrial ecology thus becoming a new science? Regardless of what it is called, according to Allenby it is apparent that substantial fundamental research is required if sustainability and sustainable development are to become more than slogans. Few people, however, even recognise the profound depths of our ignorance, much less understand the need for an integrated, international research and development programme. The following is a 1997 paper that Allenby presented in Paris.
