Ethics in Industrial Ecology

Industrial ecology (IE) intends to improve industrial processes in a way that the society benefits with as less damage of the environment as possible. As a concept it gives responses to environmental problems in the field of industry and technology and aims to enable management of human activity on a sustainable basis by minimizing energy and materials usage, ensuring acceptable quality of life for people, minimizing negative ecological impacts of human activity to levels natural systems can sustain, and maintaining economic viability of systems for industry, trade and commerce. Industrial ecology offers a systems methodology for the analysis of material and energy flows. Thereby an investigation of the connection between humans and nature, placing human activity in the larger context of the biophysical environment from which we obtain resources and into which we put our wastes is of essential importance.

Since industrial ecology has been developed by engineers and natural scientists an ethical reflection of the concept is often neglected. Ubiquitarily manifests however in anthropocentric assertions such as harmonizing the contradiction between nature and culture with scientific expertise, appropriate technology and socio-economic management.

This paper interprets industrial ecology ethically by relating values to specific characteristics of the systems methodology. This interpretation should provide a starting point for a debate within the field out from the concepts’ own epistemological premises. The presumption for the value of this endeavour is that industrial ecology is not morally “neutral” but possesses an implicit normative potential for the design of a possible sustainable world.

Following the introduction, which presents the systems methodology as a core concept in industrial ecology, the second section gives an overview over main environmental ethics positions to prepare the ground for the argument that industrial ecology might benefit from considering a moderate biocentrism. Section three examines three epistemological characteristics of the systems methodology: interdependence, diversity and complexity and explores their relationship to values in ethics: responsibility, openness and correspondence. Conclusively, the fourth section gives some reasons why a moderate biocentrism supplementing anthropocentric positions is advantageous for IE and what benefits can be gained for research and practice in the field.