My research and teaching follow that precept. Mining, which includes resource extraction and processing to produce raw materials for industry, is the beginning of the chain. The raw materials are used by industry to produce goods that make their way through the market economy. Not only do they no longer have value, they become an economic liability. Those goods have become waste .
Industrial ecology asks that one take a more fundamental view.
Only by better implementing the second can the precepts of industrial ecology be employed to genuinely permit sustainable development .