Industrial Recycling Networks as Starting Points for Broader Sustainability‐Oriented Cooperation?

Abstract

Summary Closing loops by intercompany recycling of by‐products is a core theme of industrial ecology (IE). This article considers whether industrial recycling networks or industrial symbiosis projects can be used as a starting point for much broader intercompany cooperation for sustainable development. Evidence presented is based on the results of an empirical investigation of the recycling network Styria in Austria, the recycling network Oldenburger Münsterland in Germany, and the manufacturing sector in Austria. Statistical analysis shows that the percentage of by‐products that are passed on to other companies for recycling purposes is not higher in member companies of the recycling networks than in the other companies of the manufacturing sector in Austria. In terms of cooperation, the relationships with the respective recycling partners are found to be very similar to regular customer relations. Furthermore, the companies of the recycling networks remain unaware of the network to which they belong. Instead, one of the main findings of this study is that intercompany recycling activities are regarded by the company representatives as bilateral market transactions, not as collaborative network activities. This has potentially significant implications for the use of industrial symbiosis networks as starting points for sustainability networks with broader cooperation toward sustainability. The findings raise interesting questions as to whether such broader cooperation might result from a conscious planning process or might emerge largely spontaneously as part of normal market coordination. In any case, intercompany recycling is clearly considered to be a very important field of collaborative action for sustainability in industry.

Scholarship and Practice in Industrial Symbiosis: 1989–2014

“…With increasing experiences with successes and failures, however, more studies have examined the role of social factors (Ashton 2008 ;Gibbs 2003 ;Hewes and Lyons 2008 ;Howard-Grenville and Paquin 2008 ;Jacobsen 2007 ). Some studies describe industrial symbiosis as a learning process and link it to innovation for sustainability at local and regional levels (Mirata and Emtairah 2005 ;Posch 2010 ;Ristola and Mirata 2007 ;Walter and Scholz 2006 ). Recently, industrial symbiosis was conceptualized as a dynamic process, which can offer new insights about the emergence, evolution, and dissolution of symbiotic relationships and broader institutional dynamics (Boons et al 2011Spekkink 2014 ).…”

Condicionantes de consolidação de redes de cooperação interorganizacional: um estudo de caso sobre o Rio Grande do Sul

“…Dessa forma, as abordagens clássicas e recentes que fazem referências à consecução de objetivos estratégicos na consolidação da cooperação organizacional têm examinado este processo com base em diferentes perspectivas, entre elas: a) compartilhamento de riscos (Poletto, Duarte e Mata, 2011;Mowery, Oxley e Silverman, 1996;Sachwald, 1998); b) racionalização da produção e economias de escala (Posch, 2010;Glaister e Buckley, 1996;Kent, 1991); c) expansão internacional (Chen, 2010;Hausman et al, 2010;Merchant e Schendel, 2000); d) transferência de tecnologias (Saeed, Malhotra e Grover, 2011;Ricks, 1993); e e) complementaridade de recursos (Kunzler e Bulgacov, 2011;Lee e Monge, 2011).…”

Industrial symbiosis as sustainable development strategy: adding a change perspective

“…All three approaches analyse actor networks (Cohen-Rosenthal, 2000;Posch, 2010), facilitated by a broker or an organisation (Burström and Korhonen, 2001;Hewes and Lyons, 2008;Mirata 2004). They all include public and private actors and assume goal-orientedness towards IS or another common goal.…”