Environmental engineers design complex treatments for wastes and remediation of toxics.
Now imagine these four operations linked as a mimicry of an ecosystem where waste of one organism serves as nourishment for another. The pharmaceutical plant trucks its biological sludge to local farms for use as fertilizer. Waste heat from the powerplant is reused by homes, greenhouses and fish farms. The powerplant sells its fly ash to cement producers and recovers and treats stack flue gas to produce gypsum for sale to the wallboard plant. The refinery supplies its cooling water effluent to the powerplant for use as raw boiler feed water.