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Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management
António Mendes Lopes (editor), Jiazhong Zhang(editor)
António Mendes Lopes (editor)

University of Porto, Portugal

Email: aml@fe.up.pt

Jiazhong Zhang (editor)

School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi Province 710049, China

Fax: +86 29 82668723 Email: jzzhang@mail.xjtu.edu.cn


Exploring Improvement Paths for Eight Industrial Symbiosis Complexes throughout the World

Journal of Environmental Accounting and Management 1(3) (2013) 295--306 | DOI:10.5890/JEAM.2013.08.007

Hongmei Zheng$^{1}$, Yan Zhang$^{1}$, Zhifeng Yang$^{1}$, Gengyuan Liu$^{1}$, Meirong Su$^{1}$, Bin Chen$^{1}$, Xiaojie Meng$^{1}$, $^{2}$ and Yating Li$^{2}$

$^{1}$ State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Xinjiekouwai Street No. 19, Beijing 100875, P. R. China

$^{2}$ Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, China

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Abstract

Industrial symbiosis complexes have been developing throughout the world for nearly seventy years since 1947, “industrial symbiosis” was proposed firstly. Unfortunately, due to the changes of the exchanges between members or the disappearance or newly-built activities of some members, only a few complexes developed smoothly and sustainably, such as Kalundborg industrial symbiosis complex. Therefore, it is necessary to plan and redesign exist-ing industrial symbiosis complexes. In this study, we firstly combined with density and network degree centralization metrics in network analysis method and divided these complexes into three different types: dependence-oriented (Guangxi, Xinjiang, and Ka-lundborg), equality-oriented (Choctaw and Lubei), and nested-oriented complexes (Kitakyushu, Tianjin, and Styria), then summarized their similarities. Secondly, we can propose new established exchanges for all the eight industrial symbiosis complexes throughout the world from the perspective of analyzing their deficiencies in structural characteristics and calculate how the effectiveness of these new linkages. This study can provide basis for the resource utilization efficiencies improvement and the stable and sustainable development of these complexes.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (no. NCET-12-0059), by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 41171068 and 40701004), by the National Science Foundation for Innovative Research Group (no. 51121003), by the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (no. IRT0809), by the Special Fund of State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control of China (no.12Y04ESPCN and 10Z02ESPCN), and by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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