ENVS 2400 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Ecological Footprint, Life-Cycle Assessment, Industrial Ecology
11 Dec 2013
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Document Summary
This quality of self regulation is due to the efficient cyclical interactions of all energy and matter within the ecosystem. Every form of material residue is used (food-webs) and has an important regulatory mechanism which is sunlight. On the other hand, industrial systems are structured in a linear input-transformation-output process of resources and energy. Due to a lack of natural imposing constraints and because human desire for goods does not respect biophysical limits, industrial systems fall into inefficiency. Industrial ecology has the goal of reducing human dependence on the biosphere as the ultimate source as well as decreasing matter and energy consumption by emulating ecosystems and their cyclical matter-energy flows. Waste has to be avoided and residuals would be the ideal outputs in order to be re-used (reduction of dissipative consumption). The industrial ecology classifies industrial systems in three categories; type one linear where there is unlimited input flow with no possible usage of outputs (waste).
