Course in Industrial Ecology
Among the universities of the Øresund Region, several institutes have made a name of themselves in the theoretical development of industrial ecology. In collaboration with these institutes, the Øresund University offers a course that aims at teaching the methods and tools that are key requisites for understanding, analysing, designing and managing systems of industrial ecology.
The growth and development of modern society lead to continued increase in material welfare throughout the world. Most of this growth is foreseen to take place in developing countries, China and India being on top of the list of countries with rapid economic growth rates. The implications of this growth are two-sided: partly the growth is desirable in order to enable a descent life for future generations in developing countries, and because a certain level of welfare is a precondition before people have the option of addressing longer term environmental issues. But partly it leads to heavily increased draw on the Earth's resources and increased environmental impact. The best forecasts of population growth and growth in economy per capita indicate that total human consumption of goods and services grows by a factor of 5 over the next 50 years.
The way to meet the environmental challenge of this growth in material welfare is to strive to counteract it, by increasing the environmental efficiency of the way the demanded goods and services are provided. This is the task of engineers and the discipline of environmental engineering. As today's environmental impact on several areas is already believed to be too high, the challenge is to increase the environmental efficiency of the present way of satisfying human demands by a factor of more than 5, and a factor of 10 is by many seen to be necessary.
Being the main driver of development and application of technology, industry is a key actor in the effort for increasing environmental efficiency. Several approaches exist, and many methods and tools have been developed and applied to support the effort. One approach plays an important role, namely the effort to minimise resource consumption and environmental impact by co-operation between companies – e.g. in supply chains, in industrial clusters/networks and/or by establishing formalised commercial Waste Exchanges – and also by company-society co-operations in the optimisation of infrastructure. This effort, or discipline, has been entitled industrial ecology or industrial symbiosis.
The course aims at teaching the methods and tools that are key requisites for understanding, analysing, designing and managing systems of industrial ecology. The course is based on project based learning, and as a key driver and case of demonstration, the systems of beverage packaging in a modern society are targeted. This case covers key aspects of supply chain co-operation and company-society co-operation in a mutual effort to optimise beverage packaging systems and minimise their environmental impact. Huge experience on the environmental aspects of various designs of packaging systems and their related waste management systems exist, also including cost/benefit analyses, and no better case exist for demonstrating the methods and tools of industrial ecology.
Primary project participants:
Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Lund University.
Related strategic area and projects:
Urban Wastewater Treatment (course)
Øresund Environment has provided the financing and has assisted in the development of the course.
