Industry in Concert With the Environment:
Technological Change and Industrial Ecology

T he word industry often conjures up images of dirty gray buildings with smokestacks that soil the air and drainpipes that pollute rivers. This module takes a much broader view of industry, proposing that industrial systems are analogous to ecosystems: both consist of producers and consumers interacting with one another in the input, output, and internal exchange of material and energy. In industry, however, rapid technological advance has increased the speed at which society converts raw material into products and accompanying waste.

This module seeks to provide students with an understanding of the key principles, concepts, and problems in the emerging field of industrial ecology. We ask students to decide for themselves whether industry can become "greener": can it be made to replicate ecological systems in the way ecosystems reuse all the organic material they produce?

The module explores three broad themes:

• the linkages among technological change, industrialization, and global change;
• the utility of a systems approach to analyzing industrial activity; and
• the opportunities and constraints involved in making industries more closely resemble ecosystems in their productive and consumptive processes.

Unit 1 examines how technological change has enabled industry to transform nature in ever more powerful ways. As industrial production has been empowered with increasingly sophisticated technology, society's ability to affect global change has increased dramatically. The activities seek to develop the student's sense of connection to the global industrial complex and an appreciation of industry's ability to affect its local and global environments.

In Unit 2, students use a systems approach to analyze industrial processes; students are asked to pay particular attention to material and energy "inputs," their internal processing, and their "outputs" of products and waste. The activities engage students in systems analysis by having them critique their own homes, their local industrial sites, and popular case studies of their own choosing.

The third unit examines the problems and possibilities involved in industrial ecology study and practice. In the activities, students grapple with the socioeconomic, technical, informational, and other constraints to making society's industrial activities sustainable. Students also identify instances where elements of industrial ecology are being practiced, or where the potential exists to do so.