United States Environmental Protection Agency
Solid Waste and Emergency Response (5306W)
EPA530-N-00-002 
March 2000 
www.epa.gov/wastewise 

                      WASTEWISE UPDATE 

                MOVING TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY

************************************************************
The mention of any company, product, or process in this
publication does not constitute or imply endorsement by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 
************************************************************

THE SUSTAINABILITY CONTINUUM

A textile maker in rural Georgia ships cotton fabric
trimmings to a furniture manufacturer in Atlanta, who
processes the trimmings for use in office chairs. The
manufacturer takes the chairs back when customers are
finished with them, reuses all the serviceable parts,
recycles all the parts that cannot be reused, and shreds the
damaged upholstery, uncontaminated with hazardous
constituents, for composting. The compost is sold to a
nearby farmer, who uses the material as fertilizer for his
organic cotton crop.

This 'closed loop' industrial system can become a reality
when businesses, institutions, governments, and consumers
join hands to reject the currently predominant
take-use-dispose system of materials consumption. Under this
system, too many resources flow in one direction: from the
earth, into products, and finally into landfills and
incinerators, from which the original materials are, in most
cases, unrecoverable. Many products are not designed with
reuse or recycling in mind, often making these activities
difficult and expensive. This linear or cradle-to-grave
model is inherently wasteful. 

In the emerging circular or cradle-to-cradle model, the
concept of waste eventually becomes obsolete. Waste from
producers and consumers becomes input for other producers
and consumers, or for the earth itself, and resources are
cycled through the system to sustain future generations. 

The transition from a linear to a sustainable,
cradle-to-cradle system of materials use will not happen
overnight. Rather, it involves an evolution of approaches,
each more ambitious than the last one. This Update looks at
the continuum of sustainability approaches, beginning with
those that examine material flows within an organization.
Next, we discuss approaches that explore the flow of
material resources among a network of organizations.
Finally, we discuss the ultimate goal of sustainability, a
socioeconomic system that protects and enhances, rather than
degrades, the human and natural resources needed by future
generations to enjoy a quality of life equal to or greater
than our own. 

The sustainability continuum represents a gradual widening
of organizational perspective and responsibility from an
immediate group of facilities, suppliers, and customers to
society as a whole. This Update is designed to inspire your
organization to use WasteWise to help set your organization
on the road to sustainability. Doing so will help keep your
organization competitive in the new paradigm of interaction
among society, the economy, and the environment. Ray
Anderson, chairman and chief executive officer of Interface,
Inc., has captured the necessity of this transformation: "In
the 21st century, as the [next industrial revolution]
gathers speed, I believe the winners will be the resource
efficient. At whose expense will they win? At the expense of
the resource inefficient. Technology at its best, emulating
nature, will eliminate the inefficient adapters." Make sure
your organization adapts. 

************************************************************
          "If there is to be prosperity in the future,
     society must make its use of resources vastly more
     productive--deriving 4, 10, or even 100 times as
     much benefit from each unit of energy, water,
     materials, or anything else borrowed from the
     planet and consumed." --Paul Hawken and Amory and
     L. Hunter Lovins in Natural Capitalism: Creating
     the Next Industrial Revolution, 1999.
************************************************************

Early Environmental Responses 

The first responses to environmental challenges involved
'end-of-pipe' thinking. Citizens, scientists, industry, and
policymakers looked at the effects of pollution after it
exited a drain pipe or a smokestack and demanded that
producers better manage the pollution they created. This
meant cleaning waste water, installing air filters on
smokestacks, and building cleaner and safer landfills and
incinerators.

Over the last two decades, forward-thinking leaders from
government and industry have begun to realize that it makes
more sense (both environmentally and economically) to
prevent pollution rather than manage it after it is
generated. Rather than, for example, having to clean waste
water before discharging it into nearby rivers, responsible
companies have begun to find ways to alter their industrial
processes to reduce or eliminate the use of hazardous
chemicals. For solid waste, this means designing more
efficient processes and products so that less solid waste is
generated or identifying ways to recycle or reuse waste
materials. Pollution prevention remains a leading
environmental strategy for organizations today. Waste
prevention, a subset of pollution prevention, has been the
cornerstone of the WasteWise program.

Improving Resource Efficiency Within the Organization

While pollution prevention often involves a
process-by-process analysis, it has inspired some
organizations to look at the manner in which natural
resources flow through their entire systems. Material flow
analyses look at where an organization's resources come
from, how they are used, and where they end up. Such
analyses, for example, could help a company or institution
discover that a majority of its environmental problems--and
some of its costs--come from its use of one particular
substance. Switching to a more environmentally friendly
alternative, therefore, could make a big difference for this
organization, both environmentally and financially. Material
flow analyses can also be used to improve resource
productivity--getting more value out of every unit of a
resource--while simultaneously reducing the ecological
impact of one's activities. Put simply, the goal is to
produce more with less.

Eco-efficiency is a comprehensive new approach to this goal.
It involves a range of interrelated business and
environmental goals such as cutting costs, delivering higher
quality products, reducing materials consumption and waste,
and eliminating toxic releases into the environment.
According to the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development (WBCSD), eco-efficiency is a "management
philosophy that encourages businesses to simultaneously
become more competitive, more innovative, and more
environmentally responsible." [World Business Council for
Sustainable Development. Eco-Efficient Leadership for
Improved Economic and Environmental Performance. 1996. p.
4.]

     Identifying Opportunities for Resource Efficiency

WasteWise has always focused on resource efficiency. The
ultimate goal of preventing or recycling waste is the
efficient (nonwasteful) use of natural resources--such as
trees, minerals, and petroleum--and financial resources.
Organizations leading the movement toward greater
sustainability evaluate how their overall systems can become
more resource efficient throughout every stage of operation
and use. Tools to do so include lifecycle assessment (LCA)
and Design for the Environment (DfE). 

LCA is an analytical tool to holistically evaluate the
environmental consequences of a product or process. Using
LCA, an organization can examine a product's environmental
impact as it moves from raw materials extraction through
manufacturing and use to final disposal--from cradle to
grave. Although sometimes complicated and data-intensive,
LCA evaluates whether materials and products are
environmentally preferable for the uses to which they are
put.

************************************************************
          WasteWise and World Business Council for
     Sustainable Development 

          In addition to participating in WasteWise, the
     following partners are also WBCSD members: 

     3M
     AT&T
     BASF Corp.
     Dow Chemical Company
     Eastman Kodak Company
     Ford Motor Company
     General Motors Corp.
     International Paper Company
     Johnson & Johnson
     Monsanto Company
     The Procter & Gamble Company
     S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
     Weyerhauser Company
     Xerox Corp.
************************************************************

************************************************************
In 1996, Dell Computer Corporation launched a
"cradle-to-cradle" design scheme for its OptiPlex line of
computers. The new modular design allows easy upgrading,
disassembly, recycling, and reuse. The product's chassis is
fully recyclable. This environmentally sound design has
since been introduced in all non-portable Dell-branded
computers.

For more examples like this, see the WasteWise Update:
Extended Product Responsibility (October 1998). 

<www.epa.gov/wastewise/pub_c.htm#ten>
************************************************************

DfE is a strategy organizations can use to design products
with reduced environmental burden over the course of a
product's life cycle. DfE focuses on adding environmental
attributes to products to reduce material and energy
intensiveness during production. Some DfE strategies
implemented by WasteWise partners include lightweighting
products or product packaging, designing them to be more
durable, making them out of recyclable materials, or
designing them for easy disassembly to facilitate repair and
remanufacture.

DfE looks beyond the product itself and addresses minimizing
the environmental consequences associated with each
component of the product system. A product system expands
the boundaries of the "product" to include the business
transactions surrounding the production process, such as
distribution and management. Organizations can take this
approach a step further by involving their suppliers and
customers. Some companies, for example, have established
programs to take back the packaging used to transport
products to their customers or even the products themselves
after their useful lives. These materials are then reused or
recycled. Product takeback programs are becoming more and
more common among producers of electronic products.

Organizations with the foresight to improve environmental
performance and resource efficiency before being mandated to
do so by regulations will avoid delays and higher costs
later. Furthermore, those that give priority to resource
productivity, process change, and product innovation will
achieve significant performance gains at a lower cost and
gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. These
actions minimize pollution and resource depletion while
helping to build a sustainable environment, economy, and
society.

************************************************************
          "Eco-efficiency is an essential step, a bridge, on
     the road to sustainability...Intellectually and
     physically, you cannot go from [the idea of]
     pollution control to sustainability. You must go
     through a sequence of learning." --Professor
     Andrea Larson, Darden School of Business,
     University of Virginia at a presentation during
     the 1998 WasteWise National Forum.
************************************************************

************************************************************
          By the end of 1998, 3M formally integrated Life
     Cycle Management, a technique to improve
     management of environmental, health, and safety
     impacts through all phases of a product's life
     cycle, into half of its business units. The
     company expects 100 percent integration by the end
     of 2000. Since 1990, 3M has reduced volatile
     organic air emissions 80 percent, releases to
     water 75 percent, and solid waste 20 percent.
     Since 1993, the company also has reduced its
     worldwide reportable injury and illness rate 50
     percent. 
************************************************************

Looking at a Wider Network

According to author Robert Ayres, "10 tons of active mass
raw materials (not including construction materials) per
person [are] extracted from U.S. territory by the economy...
6 percent of the total is embodied in durable products. The
other 94 percent is converted into waste residuals as fast
as it is extracted..." [Ayres, Robert U. "Externalities:
Economics and Thermodynamics." Archibugi and Nijkamp, ed.
Economy and Ecology. 1989. Cited in Lowe, Ernest, John
Warren, and Stephen Moran. The Source of Value: An Executive
Briefing and Sourcebook on Industrial Ecology. 1996. p.
1.1.] These statistics demonstrate that today's
organizations need to go beyond the simplest steps of waste
reduction in order to make facilities and industries
sustainable. Organizations that have recognized this need
are moving further along on the sustainability continuum,
looking beyond their own walls to transform their
relationships with a wider network of organizations.

The study of material and energy flows and their
transformations into products, byproducts, and wastes
throughout industrial and ecological systems is a primary
concept of the movement often referred to as industrial
ecology.

     Cradle-to-Cradle 

Material flow analyses can help organizations redirect their
own materials to flow in more circular patterns, that is,
providing their wastes as inputs for other industries and
vice-versa. Under this model, organizations no longer view
the life cycles of the materials and energy they consume as
finite, ultimately ending in a landfill or in the
environment. Rather, they seek opportunities for the
continual reuse and recycling of materials through a
cooperative industrial system in which processes are
designed to consume available waste streams and to produce
only usable waste. In an October 1998 article in The
Atlantic Monthly, William McDonough and Michael Braungart
elaborate on this vision: "If people are to prosper within
the natural world, all the products and materials
manufactured by industry must after each useful life provide
nourishment for something new. Since many of the things
people make are not natural, they are not safe 'food' for
biological systems. Products composed of materials that do
not biodegrade should be designed [to] continually circulate
within closed-loop industrial cycles." Ideally, this closed
cycle would approximate the dynamic equilibrium that exists
in nature, " where energy and wastes are constantly recycled
and reused by other organisms and processes within the
system  In a totally closed industrial system, only solar
energy would come from outside, while all byproducts would
be constantly reused and recycled within." [Garner, Andy and
Gregory Keoleian. Industrial Ecology: An Introduction.
November 1995. p. 12.]

     Creating Industrial Ecosystems

As organizations pursue opportunities to create
cradle-to-cradle materials systems, they begin to forge
cooperative, resource-sharing relationships with otherwise
unrelated businesses and institutions and the surrounding
community. Individual processes and products become part of
an interconnected industrial system in which new products or
processes evolve out of or consume available waste streams,
water, and energy; in turn, processes are developed to
produce usable resources. This systemic model of integrated
processes and materials, called an industrial ecosystem, is
typically characterized by resource-efficient relationships
among organizations, including the use of recycled materials
in production, minimum waste generation, and, most
importantly, the reassessment and exchange of byproduct
materials, water, and/or energy as raw material for other
companies' processes.

In their efforts to become sustainable, entire business
communities have forged cooperative environmental
partnerships to establish eco-industrial parks. In The
Source of Value: An Executive Briefing and Sourcebook on
Industrial Ecology, Ernest Lowe, John Warren, and Stephen
Moran define an eco-industrial park as "a community of
manufacturing and service businesses seeking enhanced
environmental and economic performance through collaboration
in managing environmental and resource issues including
energy, water, and materials. By working together, the
community of businesses seeks a collective benefit that is
greater than the sum of the individual benefits each company
would [otherwise] realize." The establishment of these
networks of businesses and organizations committed to
sharing resources and using one another's byproducts
represents a big step toward the ultimate goal of reaching a
sustainable ecological and economic state. Two such
networks, the Kalundborg, Denmark, eco-industrial park and
the Red Hills Ecoplex in Mississippi, are discussed on page
10. 

************************************************************
                          Graphic
               Moving Toward Sustainability
************************************************************

************************************************************
Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program collects and grinds up old
sneakers, yielding three materials: rubber, fabric, and
foam. Nike uses the rubber and foam to make soccer fields,
running tracks, tennis courts, basketball courts, and
climbing wall decking. The granulated fabric from the shoe
uppers is recycled into carpet padding. Nike's ultimate goal
is to close the recycling loop--to make new Nike products
out of old ones. Currently, Nike is working on designing
athletic footwear to be disassembled and reused. 
************************************************************

Striving Toward Sustainability

The end goal of the sustainability continuum is to adopt
strategies and activities that meet the needs of society
while protecting, sustaining, and enhancing the human and
natural resources that will be needed by future generations
to enjoy a quality of life equal to or greater than our own.
In practice, this means questioning and reworking our entire
institutional and industrial system so that organizations
examine their relationships not just to other organizations,
but to present and future society.

Much of what this really implies remains uncertain because
of the numerous, interrelated factors that influence
society, the environment, and the economy in complex ways.
What is certain, however, is that attainment of
sustainability will require more than facile changes in
organizations' operations--it will require restructuring our
socio-economic system according to an entirely new paradigm.
Author Paul Wilson in the article "Changing Direction Toward
Sustainable Culture" in the Northwest Area Foundation's
periodical The Northwest Report, explains how a sustainable
system would differ from society's current mode of
operating: "A sustainable society would not undermine its
resource base, the assimilative capacity of its
surroundings, or the biotic stocks on which its future
prosperity depends. Sustainability means living on interest,
not drawing down capital."

The remainder of this Update presents a sample of selected
accomplishments and examples of organizations that are
putting sustainability theories into action.

INTERVIEW WITH AT&T

Brad Allenby is the environment, health and safety vice
president for AT&T and an adjunct professor at Columbia
University's School of International and Public Affairs. He
is a coauthor of the first three engineering textbooks on
industrial ecology (Industrial Ecology, Industrial Ecology
and the Automobile, and Design for Environment), and the
author of the first policy textbook on industrial ecology
(Industrial Ecology: Policy Framework and Implementation).
WasteWise staff spoke to Dr. Allenby about the
sustainability concept and its application at AT&T.

WasteWise: How did you first get involved with industrial
ecology and sustainability issues? 

Allenby: How I came into the role is probably indicative of
how I think our understanding of the environment has shifted
in the last 10 years. Ten years ago, I was a senior
environmental attorney for AT&T working the usual
issues--Superfund, TSCA, RCRA--and it was to some degree
increasingly dissatisfying. The regulations addressed a
small subset of the issues that were becoming apparent as
potential concerns.

The thinking was that the environment is only affected by
end-of-pipe manufacturing impacts, so we had our problems
beat. But environmental issues involve more than that. They
arise from the fundamental interaction of 6 billion people,
their economic system, and their technologies with the
natural system. Within this framework, I realized we didn't
have a clue. Because it was becoming more apparent that it
was the latter and not the former framework in which we
would need to work, I began to get into design for the
environment, industrial ecology, and related areas. 

WasteWise: How are companies like AT&T adapting to address
the latter framework--that environmental issues involve more
complex interactions than end-of-pipe fixes? 

Allenby: Some companies, society as a whole, and individuals
started shifting away from viewing the environment as an
overhead function--that is, you take care of the
environmental impacts only as an afterthought, only after
what you've intended to do has already affected it. Now they
are viewing the environment as a strategic function and are
realizing that concern about impacts on natural systems has
to be built into the processes that underlie the very
existence of the institution, whether it's the government or
AT&T. In addition, there is now the concept of the triple
bottom line, where companies are evaluated by stakeholders
not just on economic performance, but also on environmental
and social performance.

WasteWise: Many companies use the word "sustainability" to
describe the direction their business practices are heading.
Where does AT&T stand on the road to sustainability? 

Allenby: I will tell you honestly that I don't think there's
a company in the world that is anywhere near sustainability;
moreover, I don't think there's a company in the world that
truly understands sustainability.

WasteWise: Are there some common steps or stages that
companies need to go through to start heading in the general
direction of sustainability?

Allenby: To attain sustainability, there are at least three
dimensions along which evolution has to occur:

     *    Institutional. We simply don't have the institutions to
     manage the environment strategically. For example,
     institutional inadequacy is a big part of the dispute
     over the Kyoto Protocol.

     *    Ethical. What kind of world do we really want and who's
     to decide?

     *    Scientific. Industrial ecology is the science and
     technology base that underlies sustainability. We have
     a lot of gaps right now in our understanding of
     sustainability from a scientific perspective. 

WasteWise: Do you think that more research and scientific
exploration is the key to moving forward on the road to
sustainability?

Allenby: Yes and no. One of the unfortunate things about the
way that people throw around the phrase 'sustainable
development' is that it hides the fact that none of us
really know anything about it along any dimension.

If you try to establish policy without any science behind
it, that's not a good thing, so I think we need to do a lot
of scientific research. But similarly, if you have a lot of
data but the institutions and the ethical structure haven't
been developed, you don't get anywhere either. It all needs
to happen in unison.

It's complicated by the fact that previously all a firm had
to do was talk to the national and state governments to find
out what it had to do. But now the dialogue is not only
between a firm and the federal government, but also includes
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), other stakeholders,
communities, and other firms; it's a far more complex
operating environment than we had in the past.

WasteWise: What are some of AT&T's contributions?

Allenby: The most important thing to understand is that the
traditional environmental approach, which tends to focus on
manufacturing and manufacturing waste, breaks down for a
service company like AT&T. The traditional environmental
assessment, which only asks, "What are the bad things that
you do?", ignores the fact that AT&T's greatest
environmental impact is to enable improvements in
environmental efficiency across the economy as a whole.  

Of course, for AT&T as for every firm, the bottom line has
got to be compliance and meeting all the safety and
environmental requirements. Waste minimization activities
also should be standard business practice. For example, over
the past year or so, we have kept more than 5,000 of AT&T's
used personal computers out of landfills. We refurbished
them and gave them to schools, or we recycled and
refurbished them inside for AT&T's use. Moving to e-commerce
technology with just one major supplier saved about 1.5
million sheets of paper per year.

The next level is: what are you doing as a company to
support the development of industrial ecology and broader
options for society? There, the AT&T Foundation supports
Industrial Ecology faculty fellowships. We award about six
per year. We work with the National Environmental Education
and Training Foundation to develop an industrial ecology
curriculum for community colleges.

Then you go to the top level, where AT&T as a broad-band
service provider can enable improvements in environ-mental
and social efficiency across the economy. This is the most
important environmental performance level for many service
firms. Take something as simple as "telework."

WasteWise: "Telework" meaning telecommuting?

Allenby: Telecommuting, or virtual offices, or working from
a satellite office. Telework offers not just the primary
benefits for the environment (the emissions prevented from
the cars that are not on the road), but also the secondary
one: every car you take off the road reduces congestion by a
small amount and therefore reduces the emissions of all the
other cars on the road by a small amount. Additionally, we
have saved over half-a-billion dollars from 1992 to 1998
because of office space reductions we've been able to make
as a result of telework. That's less construction material. 

WasteWise: What are some of the obstacles to measuring real
environmental progress?

Allenby: If I'm doing environment as overhead, I can
identify it. I know what it is, I know it's environmental.
But if I'm doing something that truly matters, if it's
strategic, then environment becomes only one dimension of
the activity. Both the analysis, and the technological
issues, become far more complex. Consider the environmental
costs and benefits of e-commerce. If I buy a book from an
e-commerce vendor, is it better or worse for the environment
that I haven't driven down to the bookstore in the mall?
Well, I don't know! And those are the kinds of questions
that are critical, because although they're very complex,
they're what's happening in the real world and the economy
right now.

WasteWise: What advice would you offer to other
organizations in the WasteWise program or other Fortune 1000
companies that are striving to increase their
sustainability?

Allenby: The first comment I'd make is that there is a very
strong psychology built into the environmental movement with
NGOs, with regulators, and within companies that, to be done
right, environment has to cost you. That is not true, but
people still let that psychology prevent them from doing
things that are very smart. Again teleworking is a good
example. From a social point of view, broad-band
technologies will support new ways of commuting and working
that can significantly reduce waste, and that's where you
get the bang for the buck. . . the opportunities are
enormous. But telework as an environmental technology has
yet to be understood by environmentalists or regulators.
Many such opportunities exist in every sector. It's a
question of imagination.

WasteWise: What do you expect will be AT&T's future impact
on industry, society, and the environment?

Allenby: That is hard to answer because telecommunications
is such a fundamental part of the infrastructure of any
robust economy. I think the industrial revolution started by
focusing on energy and materials-intensive sectors. That's
where the quality of life came from in the early days of the
industrial revolution: better fiber, better clothing, the
cotton gins, steam engines, then automobiles. I think that
the information sector, including companies like AT&T, has
the potential to generate significant increases in the
quality of life while reducing the environmental impact so
that perhaps we can sustain that quality of life over time.
Nobody knows if it's going to happen but it has that
promise. The question, in part, is how much imagination,
creativity, and innovation can we bring to the process?

The more that AT&T pushes that envelope, the more it will
push other companies to do so as well. And the more we do
so, the better off we all will be.

Dr. Allenby can be reached via e-mail at ballenby@att.com. 
************************************************************

HERMAN MILLER MANUFACTURES THE FUTURE

When it comes to sustainability, Herman Miller, Inc., isn't
just sitting around: as a leading international furniture
manufacturer, Herman Miller's goal is to become a
sustainable business. Dedicated to preserving natural
resources for future generations, this company understands
the significance of using environmentally friendly materials
and processes. Herman Miller is consistently being
recognized for its environmental achievements--the company
was not only a 1999 WasteWise Partner of the Year, but also
a recipient of a 1998 Green Award from the U.S. General
Service Administration for product design and business
practices and one of Fortune magazine's "Most Admired"
companies. "Our achievements toward reaching sustainability
take a lot of determination and hard work. We set
substantial environmental goals for Herman Miller and do our
best to reach those goals in a timely manner," says James
Gillespie, environmental specialist.

Recognizing that complex relationships exist among the land,
water, and air, Herman Miller has developed comprehensive
environmental goals that include energy conservation, air
emissions reductions, transportation impact reductions, and
green buildings. The company has made some of its most
notable accomplishments with its solid waste management
program, mostly by reducing transport packaging. In fact, in
1999 the company eliminated more than 370 tons of wood
pallet waste, nearly 270 tons of corrugated cartons, and
nearly 8 tons of polystyrene packaging filler through
packaging changes. While not quite reaching its "zero
landfill" goal by the end of 1995, Herman Miller was able to
reduce its use of landfills by 65 percent, or 5,500 tons
less than 1994. This endeavor helped the company realize
$500,000 in direct cost savings and avoidances. Still
striving to reach the "zero landfill" goal, Herman Miller is
working on reducing its solid waste by another 10 percent
over the next 3 years. In pursuit of the elusive goal of
sustainability, the company also requires an environmental
lifecycle assessment (LCA) for all new products. Herman
Miller has a Design for Environment Team that will use the
LCA to look at product life cycles, including all the
processes and materials involved in the manufacture and
distribution of its products. The LCA will help the company
determine how it can conserve resources by altering product
designs and processes.

Despite these successes, Herman Miller cannot become a
sustainable business on its own. Some of its processes
generate byproducts that Herman Miller itself cannot
transform into usable material. To meet its "zero landfill"
goal, Herman Miller is working with area businesses and
agencies to make sure its byproducts become usable inputs
for local industries. The company is a charter member of the
West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum (WMSBF), a group of
more than 50 companies encouraging the adoption and
implementation of sustainable business practices. Herman
Miller and its peer group of West Michigan organizations are
laying the groundwork for an interconnected industrial
system by developing cooperative solutions to mutual waste
management concerns.

************************************************************
          WasteWise Partners in the West Michigan
     Sustainable Business Forum

     *    American Electric Power Service Corp.
     *    Georgia-Pacific Corp.
     *    Herman Miller, Inc.
     *    Pharmacia & Upjohn Company
     *    Steelcase Inc.
************************************************************

They are working, for example, to form a marketing
cooperative for recyclables in response to recent
consolidations in the Michigan waste management industry.
Smaller waste haulers that used to service niche market
recyclables such as polyurethane foam and low-density
polyethylene shrink wrap have been acquired by larger
companies with more restricted service offerings.

WMSBF reacted to this dilemma by polling its members on
their interest in pooling recyclables in the hope of finding
better prices and collection service. Eighty percent of the
members expressed interest. WMSBF is surveying area
companies to determine the material types and quantities
available for group marketing, collection container needs,
loading dock access, and other cooperative logistics. The
end result of this effort will either be a set of contracts
with existing materials recovery facilities (MRFs) in the
area or the development of a new MRF to accommodate all the
materials. In keeping with WMSBF's broad sustainability
objectives, any new MRF would be developed by retrofitting
an underutilized industrial facility.

************************************************************
          By working with its supplier network, SC Johnson &
     Son, Inc. has saved more than $120 million
     annually and reduced more than 200,00 tons of
     waste from its products since 1992 through
     eco-efficient design and operation.

          For more examples of how WasteWise partners have
     reduced waste by working with their suppliers and
     customers, see the WasteWise Update: Building
     Supplier Partnerships (April 1998).

     <www.epa.gov/wastewise>
************************************************************

This effort is important because it sets the stage for more
ambitious byproduct and resource sharing initiatives.
Presently, intermittent waste trading is occurring between
WMSBF members for such materials as plastics and oily waste
water. In the future, however, the forum hopes to establish
a fully functional industrial ecology infrastructure.
Working with the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, WMSBF has
developed a proposal to create a macro-level "mass balance"
analysis of industrial waste generation and composition in
West Michigan. The organizations would then examine the
demand for various materials in order to establish waste
exchange matches and recommend ways to develop the
infrastructure for recycling high-volume waste materials.
The research benefits and resulting new enterprise
development would be concentrated in low-income industrial
areas called "Michigan renaissance zones," supporting
sustainable economic development goals.

According to Gillespie, "Herman Miller's membership in the
WMBSF and actively participating in its efforts has been
critical to helping the company move forward on the road to
sustainability."

For more information on Herman Miller's sustainable business
initiatives, please contact James Gillespie at 616 654-5020
or send e-mail to <Jim_Gillespie@hermanmiller.com>. For more
information about WMSBF, visit
<www.sustainable-busforum.org> or contact William Stough at
616 459-3737 or <bstough@bldi.com>.

ECO-INDUSTRIAL PARKS

The Kalundborg Industrial Ecosystem

When it comes to industrial ecology and sustainability,
Kalundborg, Denmark, represents perhaps the best known
example in the world. In Kalundborg, industries are working
together to promote sustainable development by exchanging
wastes and conserving resources. These industries sought to
make economic use of their byproducts and to minimize the
cost of compliance with new, stricter environmental
regulations. [Denmark is already establishing regulations
that will require virtually all industry discharges to be in
the form of products that can serve other useful purposes by
the year 2000.] While the symbiotic relationships among the
industries evolved gradually over the past 25 years without
any planning, the Kalundborg industrial ecosystem represents
a closed system within which one facility's waste becomes
another facility's feedstock, ensuring that raw materials
are recycled or disposed of efficiently and safely.
Participating industries each benefit economically from
reduced costs of waste disposal, improved efficiencies of
resource use, and improved environmental performance.

Here's how the Kalundborg industrial ecosystem works. Steam
and various raw materials are exchanged within the
industrial ecosystem, which includes an oil refinery, a
plasterboard factory, a biotechnology production plant, a
fish farm, a coal-fired electrical power station, cement
producers, and the municipality of Kalundborg. Gas captured
from the oil refinery, for example, is sent to the
electrical power station, saving the equivalent of 30,000
tons of coal annually. The town of Kalundborg eliminated the
use of 3,500 oil-fired residential furnaces by working with
the power plant to distribute heat through a network of
underground pipes. Homeowners pay for the piping, but
receive inexpensive, reliable heat in return. Local fish
ponds also receive heat from the power plant, thereby
increasing the growth rate of fish due to warmer water. In
turn, these fish ponds provide sludge as a fertilizer for
local agriculture. The power plant also delivers process
steam to the biotechnology company and oil refinery,
provides a gypsum-containing feedstock to the plasterboard
plant, and sells fly ash for road building and cement
production. The oil refinery supplies the plasterboard plant
with all of its gas, eliminating the need to flare waste
gases. The biotechnology company provides a nutrient rich
sludge from harvesting crops for insulin, enzymes, and
penicillin to local farmers for use as fertilizer.

The Kalundborg industrial ecosystem is a good example of how
industrial ecology and the development of technologies that
eliminate waste and maximize resource efficiency will be
critical to achieving material and energy reductions that
help attain a sustainable future. Kalundborg's gradual
development of a systematic environmental way of thinking is
applicable to many other industries and might prove
particularly beneficial when planning future industrial
complexes in the United States or abroad. WasteWise partners
should take a close look at Kalundborg because this may be
the face of the future. 

For more information on eco-industrial parks, including
projects currently under way in the United States visit
<http://www.smartgrowth.org/library/eco_ind_case_intro.html>
.

************************************************************
                          GRAPHIC
Industrial Symbiosis: The Eco-Industrial Park at Kalundborg 
************************************************************

Mississippi 'Ecoplex' Puts Industrial Ecology Into Practice 

Eco-industrial parks are an emerging reality in several U.S.
states as well as in Europe. A small slice of Choctaw
County, Mississippi, is hosting an industrial complex that
will take industrial ecology from the textbooks and put it
into practice. Mississippi's Red Hills Ecoplex is one of the
few eco-industrial parks in the United States that has
started construction, and one of about 20 projects currently
in the works. The companies involved in the Red Hills
Ecoplex include a power plant (whose lignite deposits are
the energy center for the complex), a brick manufacturer,
cement and wallboard producers, a greenhouse, and a fish
farm.

According to Ron Forsythe of the Mississippi Department of
Economic and Community Planning's Energy Division, "the
original intent of the project was simply to stimulate the
local economy by developing a lignite-based power plant and
helping potential businesses reduce costs." The developers
of the power plant had access to deposits of lignite, a low
grade of coal, located in the northeast corner of the state.
The plant will burn the lignite with minimal emissions using
Clean Coal technology. As plans progressed, the developers
and government officials started to evaluate the
environmental impact of the project. At the same time, they
considered what other types of facilities might have
synergies with all the waste streams from the power plant
operation. This coincided with plans to reduce costs by
selling the byproducts of the power plant, among them clay,
fly ash, and waste heat.

The clay from the lignite mining operation will be used by a
brick manufacturer and the fly ash from the lignite-burning
will be used for manufacturing cement or wallboard. The
waste heat will be used in a greenhouse nursery which, in
turn, exchanges wastes with a nearby fish farm. Any waste
water will be filtered through an artificial marsh and
returned to the environment.

Project coordinators are ensuring that the Ecoplex
businesses do not compete directly with existing businesses
in Mississippi. Forsythe added that they will plan and
implement the project using EPA's Designing Industrial
Ecosystems Tool (DIET), a software application designed to
aid decision-makers and planners in identifying combinations
of industrial facilities that exhibit economic and
environmental potential for an eco-industrial park at a
given site. For more information about the Red Hills
Ecoplex, contact Ron Forsythe at 601 359-6600. For more
information on EPA's DIET software, visit
<www.smartgrowth.org/library/DIET.html>. 

RESOURCES FOR SUSTAINABILITY

The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability
Paul Hawken
HarperBusiness, 1994.

Provides a blueprint for a marketplace where businesses and
environmentalists work together, showing companies how to
redesign and manufacture products in innovative ways,
reeducate customers, and work closely with government toward
a profitable, productive, and ecologically sound future. 

Industrial Ecology: An Introduction
University of Michigan's National Pollution Prevention
Center for Higher Education

This publication describes the background of industrial
ecology, defines its main attributes, and provides an
overview of the topic as an academic discipline. It covers
goals, key concepts, sustainable development, system tools
(such as life cycle assessment), and future needs.
<www.umich.edu/~nppcpub/ resources/compendia/ind.ecol.html> 

"Industrial Ecology and 'Getting the Prices Right'"
Resources for the Future

This article from Resources for the Future's quarterly
newsletter argues that markets need to be fundamentally
restructured so that prices reflect the full costs of social
production. This, combined with proper incentives such as
emissions and effluent fees, will persuade more firms to act
in environmentally beneficial ways.
<www.rff.org/resources_archive/ 1998.htm> 

Journal of Industrial Ecology
The MIT Press

This international, multi-disciplinary quarterly journal is
designed to foster both understanding and practice in the
emerging field of industrial ecology. <mitpress.mit.edu/JIE> 

Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The
Interface Model
Ray Anderson
Chelsea Green Publishing Company

Ray Anderson, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of a large interior
furnishings company, recounts his awakening to the
importance of environmental issues and outlines the steps
his company, Atlanta-based Interface, Inc., is taking in its
quest to become a sustainable enterprise. 

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins
Rocky Mountain Institute, 1999

The authors describe the four principles of a new business
model in which businesses can properly account for "natural
capital" (natural resources and the ecological systems that
support life) while increasing profits, production, and
employment. <www.naturalcapitalism.org>

The Next Bottom Line: Making Sustainable Development
Tangible
World Resources Institute

This publication defines the concept of sustainable
development in a business context and describes the ways
businesses can put sustainability into practice.
<www.igc.org/wri/meb/sei/nbl.html>

"The NEXT Industrial Revolution"
The Atlantic Monthly
October 1998

In this article, William McDonough and Michael Braungart
argue that eco-efficiency slows--but does not stop--an
already environmentally destructive industrial system. They
instead explain that it is possible for businesses to be
"eco-effective"--changing processes and designs so that they
have no adverse impact on the environment.
<www.theatlantic.com/issues/98oct/industry.htm>

Center of Excellence for Sustainable Development
<www.sustainable.doe.gov>

This U.S. Department of Energy Web site is a gateway to the
latest news, information, research, and resources on
sustainable development for businesses and communities.  

Cornell University's Work and Environment Initiative:
Eco-Industrial Parks
<www.cfe.cornell.edu/wei/EIDP/eid.html>

Hosted by Cornell University's Center for the Environment,
this Web site provides the latest information on industrial
ecology in practice. It includes updates and case studies on
eco-industrial park projects in the United States.

Guide to Sustainable Design, Development, and Policy on the
Web
<www.lib.virginia.edu/fine-arts/sustain.html>

Supports the University of Virginia's Institute for
Sustainable Design by organizing resources on
sustainability, including organizations, publications, and
Web links, into various categories.

International Institute for Sustainable Development
<iisd1.iisd.ca/business/>

The Business and Sustainable Development section of this
Canadian-based organization encourages business leaders to
develop a vision of a sustainable company, translate that
vision into a management action plan, and turn
sustainability into a competitive advantage. The site is a
comprehensive source on sustainable development for the
private sector.

President's Council for Sustainable Development
<www.whitehouse.gov/PCSD>

President Clinton formed this council in 1993 to advise him
on sustainable development and to develop bold, new
approaches to achieve the country's economic, environmental,
and equity goals.

SustainableBusiness.com
<www.sustainablebusiness.com>

This business-oriented Web site provides the latest news and
research on sustainable business practices. The online
magazine Sustainable Business Insider features in-depth
articles, "experts" columns, and case studies. 

Sustainable Business Network
<sbn.envirolink.org> 

Promotes the growth and development of environmentally and
socially responsible businesses, providing the tools and
information necessary to make sustainable business a
prominent global economic force.

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
<www.wbcsd.ch>

WBCSD is a coalition of international companies committed to
economic growth and sustainable development. The Web site
provides news on the council's activities and links to all
of their business-oriented publications, many of which are
viewable online.

SUNetwork
<www.sustainableusa.com/default.cfm>

This Web site was developed for the May 1999 National Town
Meeting for a Sustainable America and continues to provide
valuable information on sustainability. It contains the
meeting proceedings and listings of sustainability news and
events. Visitors also can view sustainability commitments
made by other organizations across the country.

United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development
<www.un.org/esa/sustdev/index.html>

This Web site includes a full version of Agenda 21, the
environmental action plan adopted at the 1992 United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro,
as well as topical summaries and a linked index to the
document. The site also includes other United Nations
Commission on Sustainable Development publications and
information.