Systemic analysis of the contributions of co-located industrial symbiosis to achieve sustainable development in an industrial park in Northern Spain

Abstract

Resource efficiency is a strategy with great potential to make progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), since it can contribute to meeting a variety of economic, environmental and social targets. In this context, this investigation developed a systemic analysis of co-located Industrial Symbiosis (IS) synergies in an industrial park formed of four companies. To this end, public data showing that the main activity in this park concerned materials, water and steam flows were supported with short visits to the companies for verification purposes. Then, the effects of nine exchange and twelve share synergies were analysed at different scales according to their impacts on sustainable development. The changes caused by these synergies in the flows in the industrial park enabled saving more than 10 k tonnes of raw materials and waste disposal and almost 10 Mm3 of raw water per year, as well as six auxiliary service systems. In the end, these figures might be translated into more than 200 kt CO2 eq. and EUR 6M saved per year, which in turn corresponds to 0.05% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the region in which the park is located. In terms of sustainable development, these modifications were translated into contributions to nine SDGs and 14 of their specific targets, proving the domino effect associated with the application of IS policies by governments and public entities.