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Sustainable Development and Industrial Ecology
• Social: Create new job opportunities through local utilization and
management of natural resources. Develop business opportunities
and increase cooperation and participation among different industries.
• Government: Reduce cost of environmental degradation, demand on
natural resources, and demand on municipal infrastructure, and
increase government tax revenue.

3.5 Recycling Economy/Circular Economy Initiatives

Developing an eco-industrial park is a complex process because it requires
integration among information technologies, innovation, extended producer
responsibility, design for environment, and decision making. Several models
with slight differences are encountered in many countries. One of the models
is the 1996 Act of the German Federal Government of the recycling economy
(RE). After a short period of time, the Japanese Government established a pro-
gram to achieve the RE concept by implementing a good product design and
a comprehensive resources recovery. The circular economy (CE) initiative is
then undertaken by the Chinese Government. The circular economy approach
to resource-use efficiency integrates cleaner production and industrial ecology
in a broader system encompassing industrial firms, networks or chains of
firms, eco-industrial parks, and regional infrastructure to support resource
optimization. Different initiatives were undertaken in other countries such
as the USA and Canada.

Germany: The German Government passed a new Act in 1996 to move
Germany toward a recycling economy using a closed loop economy law. This
law traces the life cycle of production, consumption, and recovery or disposal
in order to minimize the amount of waste generated in the manufacturing
processes and encourage the product design that can be easily reused or recy-
cled according to the principle of “extended producer and consumer respon-
sibilities” discussed in Chapter 1 (Dietmar, 2003).
Upstream strategy for waste prevention and enhancing recyclables is the
main key behind the German recycling economy legislation. Germany has
started a number of EIPs and waste exchange projects to support implemen-
tation of the recycling economy law. The German institutes and consulting
firms supporting implementation of the German legislation provided guide-
lines in the use of cleaner production, life cycle analysis and design for envi-
ronment tools in the industrial sectors.
Japan: According to the Japan Environmental Agency (1998), Japan currently
consumes 1,950 million ton/y of natural resources and imports 700 million
ton/y from overseas. In the same time, a total of 450 million tons of waste
(industrial and municipal) are generated per year. Over 60% of this waste is
either incinerated or landfilled. Current estimates predict that remaining land-
fill capacity will be exhausted by 2007. As a result, Japan’s government has