Concept of Eco Industrial Parks
The concept of ‘Eco Industrial Parks’ (EIP) has been first described at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro 1992. Eco Industrial Parks are a promising strategy to promote sustainable industrial development and to improve the industries’ environmental performance in terms of management of materials, energy and waste. The Eco Industrial Parks provide substantial benefits for participating companies, for the neighborhood and for the region. The commonly accepted international definition earlier was based on the one initially created by an Indigo Development team in 1992 and then expanded for the US-Environmental Protection Agency in 1995. It was refined in 2001 by Ernest Lowe in an Eco Industrial Handbook published by the Asian Development Bank:
“An eco-industrial park or estate is a community of manufacturing and service businesses located together on a common property. Member businesses seek enhanced environmental, economic, and social performance through collaboration in managing environmental and resource issues”.
However, the term ‘eco industrial development’ needs a new definition in the context of changing scenarios, especially in situations like in India, and different facets of eco industrial development. Some of the existing examples are looked into for arriving at a strategic approach for the Indian scenario.
All over the world, different aspects of eco-industrial development can be found. The example of Industrial Symbiosis could be found in Kalundborg, Denmark. The history of Kalundborg began in 1961 with a project to use surface water from Lake Tissø for a new oil refinery in order to save the limited supplies of ground water and by 1980 various other projects were introduced into what is probably the best-known example of a working industrial ecosystem, or to use their term - an industrial symbiosis. The philosophy behind this success story is that one company's by-product becomes an important resource to one or several of the other companies. The outcomes are a reduced consumption of resources and a significant reduction in environmental strain. The collaborating partners also benefit financially from the co-operation because the individual agreements are based on commercial principles.
In Kalundborg’s case, for example, the waste heat from a power is used by the municipality and a fish farm, fly ash from the power plant is used by a cement plant, yeast slurry form a company is used in pig farm and other examples include waste water, steam, cooling water etc. exchanged between industries.
The Bayer Chemical Park at Leverkusen in Germany was established in 1891. The industrial plants changed but the park exists successful because of proper planning. The Chemical Park Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany is operational since the year 1877, covers 300 Ha and has approximately 9,500 employees. The Shanghai Chemical Industrial Park in Shanghai, China is developed in 5,560 acres on eco industrial park concepts with adequate environmental infrastructure & services as well as disaster management facilities has targeted investments of US$ 35-50 billion at the site. These examples show that through proper planning of the sites, the industrial parks could fulfill the economic as well as environmental targets while also having longevity and flexibility for accommodating changing businesses.
For the Indian scenario where in there are several old industrial parks that do not have cost effective common environmental infrastructure and services as well as lack synergies among the industries in the parks, the eco industry park concept has been customized to address the following aspects:
a) Siting and site master planning of of new industrial parks integrating environment, energy and climate issues,
b) Transformation process of existing industrial parks to eco industrial parks,
c) Strengthening of environmental infrastructure and services in the industrial parks,
d) Resource efficiency and improved environmental management in individual industries, and
d) Capacity building of individuals and organizations in the areas of eco industrial development, pollution control/regulatory actions, disaster risk management etc.
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