On March 18, 2021, the GEIPP Ukraine Project held the second of two workshops dubbed Industrial Symbiosis in Industrial Parks. The participants learned the concept of industrial symbiosis, successful examples of industrial symbiosis implementation, and ways to implement it in Ukrainian IPs. According to Dirk Hengevoss, international expert of the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, industrial symbiosis was launched spontaneously in Kalundborg IP, Denmark in the 1970ies. For the first time, it was defined by American scientist Marian Chertow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_Chertow. According to Chertow, industrial symbiosis engages traditionally separate industries in a collective approach to competitive advantage involving physical exchange of materials, energy, water, and/or by-products. The keys to industrial symbiosis are collaboration and the synergistic possibilities offered by geographic proximity. Mr. Hengevoss provided an example of symbiosis between a dairy producer and a farm. A huge amount of water is needed to clean the equipment at dairy plants. The water is full of nutrients and can be provided to the cattle nearby to drink, instead of being considered as wastewater.
According to Mr. Hengevoss, open and tight cooperation among the tenant companies of IPs is the key factor of successful industrial symbiosis implementation. The other success factors include favorable legal conditions, investment payback stimulates, cooperation with scientific organizations, efficient park management. Mr. Hengevoss provided examples of three parks in India, Sweden, and Denmark that have gained economic and environmental benefits from implementing industrial symbiosis.
Fredy Dinkel, international expert of the Carbotech AG presented industrial symbiosis approach steps in eco-industrial parks:
1. Resource-efficient and cleaner production help save costs.
2. Reuse of water and solid waste minimizes production waste.
3. Cleaning industrial discharges help save natural resources.
4. Arranging IP operation to meet the EIP criteria.
Two approaches can be applied to build industrial symbiosis in the park:
1. Industrial symbiosis identification based on the type of waste or by-product.
2. Listing incoming and outgoing flows of resources of certain companies.
UNIDO has the methodology to apply both approaches.
