Urban industry design

Industrial symbiosis: definition and roadmap

Industrial symbiosis connects industry and cities to offer a powerful pathway to reduce energy demand, strengthen resilience and unlock systemic efficiency gains. The FABRIX project produced examples of Industrial Symbiosis that help create a roadmap for organizations, facilitators and city administrations to follow.

Definition of industrial symbiosis (IS)

Industrial symbiosis (often abbreviated as IS) is a coordinated industrial strategy in which one organisation (company, sector, or entity) makes purposeful use of under-utilised resources from another — broadly defined to include waste, by-products, residues, energy, water, logistics capacity, expertise, equipment, and materials — with the outcome of keeping these resources in productive use for longer and thereby advancing resource efficiency and circularity in industrial systems.

This concept reflects a systems-based approach to a sustainable and integrated industrial economy, where collaborative exchanges create business opportunities, reduce demand for virgin inputs, minimise waste disposal and resource inefficiencies, and thus contribute to broader EU climate, energy and circular economy objectives (e.g., decarbonisation, resource productivity).

Urban IS applies this systemic approach to urban areas, which group 75% of the European population and produce a significant amount of municipal waste (511 kg on average per person - source Eurostat). Although there has been an increase in recycling of waste compared to landfill and incineration in the past 30 years, more options for reuse loops which are fostered by Circular economy need to be implemented.

Is Industrial symbiosis part of the Circular economy? Circular economy is an economic framework in which the value of products, materials and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible, and the generation of waste is minimised. IS can contribute to circular economy as a practical, operational strategy used within industrial systems. Basically it’s one strategic part of the overall framework. Official EU circular economy policy positions industrial symbiosis as a means to support resource efficiency and the transition toward a circular economy and climate objectives by fostering mutually beneficial exchanges across industrial actors.

Is Industrial symbiosis different from Industrial metabolism, or not? In analogy with the biological metabolism, Industrial metabolism (IM) describes the connections and processes between industrial capacities that contribute to the function of a larger system e.g. a material cycle or a sectorial value chain. IM is a subsystem of the socio-economic system at large, that includes human and public organisations systems.

And what about Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0? Industry 4.0 focuses on digitalisation, automation and data-driven optimisation within individual firms and value chains, improving efficiency, flexibility and traceability through technologies such as IoT, AI and digital twins. These tools can act as enablers of Industrial Symbiosis. Recently there has been a shift to what is being termed Industry 5.0, which contrasts this focus on the digital with a return to human-centric, sustainable and resilient models by placing a value on integrating human creativity and know-how with digital tools.

How industrial symbiosis is strategic in the Fabrix Project

One of the key elements in IS is the creation of a collaborative network, in which cooperation among companies, sectors, or stakeholders is based on their exchanges of waste-based resources, and is supported by facilitating organisations, shared data flows and IT processes or enabling policy frameworks.

The FABRIX platform has been designed to assist organizations (companies of various types from SMEs and SCEs to micro-businesses) to collaborate with the auxiliary of Facilitators (incubators, accelerators, innovation labs or fashion councils, industry or union groups and public authorities, etc). Connections between co-actors are in part data-driven, in part developed thanks to the very human, qualitative knowledge of local Facilitators.

To provide practice - based use cases, we decided to explore IS in the Textile & Clothing sector in Urban environments, focusing on pilot cities and building communities that were in part defined through their native space .

Roadmap: How to apply industrial symbiosis in your city or region

In the textile and clothing industry, industrial symbiosis can be applied when companies, supported by intermediaries and enabled by policy makers, systematically exchange materials, energy, water, services or capacity across organisational boundaries. The roadmap below combines already existing examples and Fabrix prototypes.

Organisations

For organisations (industries, SMEs, value chain actors etc), industrial symbiosis could be broken down into three main areas:

a) Material and by-product symbiosis (where by-products are used in other industries)

• Textile manufacturers provide waste that can be used in insulation or construction; cotton, wool, or polyester cutting scraps are supplied as secondary raw materials for insulation panels, acoustic materials, automotive felts, or geotextiles.
• Fiber producers may provide raw material for textile recyclers.
• Pre-consumer waste streams (off-spec fibres, polymer residues) from fibre plants are used as feedstock for mechanical or chemical recycling, creating closed or semi-closed loops between firms.
• Post-consumer waste can feed into creative design for resale, reuse and remanufacture by local SMEs, SCEs or independents.

b) Energy and utility symbiosis

• Manufacturing, dyeing, finishing plants may work with neighbouring industries to create district energy or heating networks
• As textile and clothing necessitates heavy usage of water, facilitate the development of shared water treatment infrastructures (technical or biological systems) and reduce freshwater depletion; treated wastewater may also be utilised by other industrial users.

c) Service and capacity symbiosis

• Develop Shared logistics and reverse logistics
• Apparel brands co-use transport, warehousing, and collection systems for textile waste and unsold garments.
• Shared testing, repair, or sorting facilities
• Shared learning resources or training sessions

Facilitators

Facilitators (incubators, accelerators, union groups etc.) play an important role in helping create connections amongst organizations. Their contribution may work in the following areas:

a) Use of platforms and networks

• Helping organizations onboard to platforms like FABRIX where materials and services can be mapped and matched
• Interpret data to predict needs, shifts, trends and communicate them to policy makers or urban planners
• Help match companies interested in collaborating based on their needs but also on their values.
• Generate a network of meaningful local production and consumption

b) Provide a range of services

• Space: Access to affordable, urban production space, assist with understanding or lobbying to change zoning bylaws;
• Sourcing: finding sustainable materials for clothing production
• Workforce: Access to qualified workforce; training / mentoring to improve talents and skills
• Funding: Find and distribute opportunities for financial contributions ; Coordinate multiple SMEs to participate in symbiotic exchanges that help save money.

c) Advocacy and communication

• Advocacy: Represent organizations’ needs towards local policy makers to connect SMEs reality with urban planners.
• Communication: Assist organizations in developing their "green" communication strategy, avoiding greenwashing and aligning claims with reality.

Policy makers and cities

City administrators, policy makers and urban planners can contribute to industrial symbiosis on a local level by partnering with Facilitators who have a wide knowledge of their specific community’s needs. You might intervene to make their circular economy goals more possible through:

• Developing regulatory and planning measures to assist the T&C industry in your city
• Designate textile clusters to encourage shared energy and other resource usage
• Providing tax or other incentives for cross-sector or cross-company collaboration
• Developing private-public financial systems to boost collaborative T&C organizations.

Contributed by Cedecs-TCBL.