Industrial ecology: management of secondary raw materials in the territorial metabolism - illustrations

Industrial and territorial ecology (ITE) applies to all human activities: it's a global, systemic approach. Based on the principles of understanding the functioning of natural ecosystems, industrial and territorial ecology aims to transpose these principles by analogy to the functioning of artificial systems. The term "industrial ecology" must first be understood as applying specifically to the sphere of industrial activity conceived and established since the industrial era at the end of the 18th century, in the sense of concentrating the means of exploiting resources and transforming them at high production yields. The result is the massive production of waste, effluents and, more generally, pollutants, affecting all natural receptor environments (atmosphere, aquifer, lithosphere, biosphere), on wider time and space scales (globalization process). The process of industrialization is essentially oriented towards the expansion of a consumer society and the multiplication of economic exchanges, covered by the notion of "growth" (whose main indicator is the GDP, gross domestic product), neglecting the limits specific to natural ecosystems, both on the "resource" side and that of so-called "receiving" environments. Industrial and territorial ecology is first and foremost concerned with the need to reconcile "scientific ecology" and "economic and industrial activities", so as to re-establish levels of dependence in the management capacities of these resources, both tangible and intangible. The rapprochement between "ecology" and "industry" stems from this desire to integrate, on the one hand, the economy on the scale of the global ecosystem and, on the other, ecological parameters into the design of industrial systems.

This article therefore proposes to situate industrial and territorial ecology within environmental engineering as a field of design and application with a view to optimizing the management of energy resources and raw materials, reducing waste production at source, and systematically recovering waste as secondary raw materials in other production processes.

The limitations of this exercise stem from the novelty of this approach, based on recent work (since the 1990s), the complexity of existing industrial and territorial systems, which have not, after all, had this integrative vision from the outset, and the limited number of real experiments on a territorial scale.

However, it should be emphasized that this field of research and application is already undergoing significant development as a result of current pressures on raw material costs, major global ecological risks (greenhouse gas emissions, water and soil pollution, erosion of biodiversity), and even the health risks associated with environmental degradation.