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Sustainable Development and Industrial Ecology
The outcome of main guidelines developed by Canada to move toward sus-
tainable development was reflected in several programs and action plans with
no programs specifically designed to support EIP development in Canada, yet
programs that may be applicable to EIP have been identified by Peck et al.
(1997) with their incentives, objectives, and outcome mechanisms.
Several federal strategies, programs, initiatives, and tools have been devel-
oped to help implement EIPs. Although these programs are not intended
specifically for EIP, they are generally directed to material and energy saving,
and innovation which fit the criteria of EIP. Legislation and incentive mech-
anisms to encourage EIP in Canada were developed such as:

• Overcome traditional fragmentation by collaboration among public
agencies, design professions, project contractors, and companies.
• Developers may need to make a strong case for banks to finance a
project with a longer payback period.
• Get contracts with major companies to locate in EIP; this will help
prove the concept to financiers.
• Public development authorities may be better prepared to bear the
possible increase in development costs than private developers. Or
the public sector may fund some aspects of the development of an
EIP with strong public benefits.
• Companies using each other’s residual products as inputs face the
risk of losing a critical supply or market if a plant closes down. To
some extent, this can be managed as with any supplier or customer
relationship (i.e. keeping alternatives in mind and writing contracts
that ensure reliability of supply).
• Exchange of byproducts could lock in continued reliance on toxic
materials. The cleaner production solutions of materials substitution
or process redesign should take priority over trading toxics within an
EIP site.

3.6 Eco-Industrial Park Case Studies

Based on previous discussion, a well-designed eco-industrial park (EIP) will
close the material flows and energy cascading within an industrial commu-
nity. In other words, eco-industrial parks can be considered an “Industrial
community of manufacturing and service companies to enhance their eco-
efficiency through improving their economic and environmental perform-
ance by collaboration among each other in the management of the natural
resources.” EIPs proved that it is the most valuable approach in the indus-
trial zone from the economical, social, and environmental points of view.
One famous model for eco-industrial parks is Kalundborg industrial estate
located in Kalundborg town (harbor town) at the north west of Denmark,
75 km west of Copenhagen. It will be discussed in detail in the following