Utilization of Virtual Globes for Open Source Industrial Symbiosis

Abstract

Several proprietary industrial symbiosis software tools have been developed, however, without long term financial commitments these endeavors fall short of creating generalizable and sustainable tools. The recent development of virtual globes such as Google Earth (GE), an information service that provides imagery and three dimensional data depicting the entire physical earth, provides an opportunity to use a new sustainable method of navigating information to save energy and use materials more efficiently in the real world. To test this open source methodology, a data set was used from the Department of Environmental Protection in Pennsylvania, which has mandated reporting the location of disposal and type of residual waste from sources producing more than one ton per month. This data set was integrated into the GE interface to identify and quantify opportunities for materials and energy efficiency improvements. This investigation found that virtual globes coupled with open source waste information can be used to: 1) reduce embodied transport energy by reducing distances to recycling facilities, 2) choose end of life at recycling facilities rather than landfills, and 3) establish industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial parks on known by-product synergies. For one waste category, a potential 70% reduction in ton-kilometers was identified by simply observing closer disposal locations than currently utilized; similar reductions are achievable in other categories. It is concluded that the open source sharing of information in virtual globes provide a means to identify economically and environmentally beneficial opportunities for waste management if the data have been made available.

The Benefits of Sharing—Nice Guys and Girls do Finish First

“…By colocating factories in ecoindustrial parks, both the transportation costs and transportation energy between them can be minimized and many of the inputs for the plants can literally come from waste products in the surrounding population centers. The use of open-source information to map potential energy and cost savings from transportation reductions and industrial symbiosis exists in many fields [52,53]. In addition, the wide variety of open-source business models enable essentially any form of company to take advantage of industrial-scale sharing even within the industry itself with their competitors.…”