ABSTRACT
This chapter explores eco-industries and the greening of imperialism. The first and second sections give a recent history of manufacturing. This explains how environmental problems in the 1950s and 60s lead to radical critiques of production in the 1970s which were then swept aside in the 1980s and 90s by arguments around eco-industrial revolution. The third section reflects on this history focusing particularly on environmental gains in the richest countries towards the end of the 20th century. It explains how, alongside improvements in regulation and ‘eco-efficiency,’ that relocation of manufacturing to poorer countries played an important role. This argument leads in the fourth section to a discussion of how political and economic forces shape society through innovation (changes to where, what and how things are made) and when this constitutes industrial imperialism. Building on this, the fifth section discusses the greening of industry today, illustrated by a growing number of eco-giga projects, and the possibility of eco-industrial imperialism into the future. The final section sets out an alternative approach to industry arguing that innovation will be more responsible and lead to better outcomes if power over design is spread more widely. This can be achieved by embedding innovation in bottom-up and deliberative arrangements.
