Research Statement

Stocks and Flows Project (STAF)

CIE is evaluating current and historical flows of specific technologically significant materials and estimating the stocks available in different types of reservoirs, especially industrial and municipal stockpiles and landfills. To do so, the group is drawing largely on information now scattered across a number of data repositories, mineralogical and geological records, economic data, industrial association publications, environmental records, and so on. Complete cycle characterizations for copper and zinc have been completed for all relevant countries, nine world regions and the planet. Similar work is in progress for silver, nickel and steel. The information will then be used in conjunction with environmental data to develop scenarios for future technological development and its environmental implications.

Industrial Symbiosis

Industrial symbiosis, models of eco-industrial development in which industries exchange materials, energy, and/or information, is a focus of Marian Chertow’s research. In 2001, she began a long-term research project: “Puerto Rico: An Island of Sustainability,” a multi-year program that seeks to establish the environmental and economic rationale for intra-industry exchange of materials, water, and energy. The hypothesis that most guides this research is that location within an eco-industrial system will enhance economic development while minimizing environmental damage. In order to support this hypothesis, the long-term program is to determine whether industrial symbiosis raises barriers to exit for existing companies so they are more likely to stay where they are. It also examines the potential of industrial symbiosis with regard to attracting new businesses.

Quantitative Sustainability

In order to set sustainability as a target or goal for our industrial society, we must be able to quantify what that target or goal is. Without such quantification, corporations and other users of resources have no way to decide how their actions relate to sustainability, and such quantification has, for the most part, not been attempted. Support is being sought to fund research that will attempt to determine quantitative limits to the sustainability of various resources in nature and to develop policy approaches to implementing the results.

Collaborative Industrial Ecology in Asia

In partnership with Yale’s Industrial Environmental Management Program, CIE is conducting research and training focused on the environmental opportunities and challenges from the enormous expansion of Asian industrial activity. The project is premised on a desire to institutionalize the understanding and use of industrial ecology in Asia. The activities of the project, funded by the Luce Foundation, are focused on educational exchange – including student scholarships, faculty exchange, and publications. The project partners include Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, the Centre for Environmentally Sound Technology Transfer (CESTT) in China, Shanghai JiaoTong University Management School in Shanghai, China, and the National University of Singapore.

Bio-based materials

Industrial production based on biologically-sourced raw materials and residuals is progressing rapidly for biopolymers and builds on long standing research and development in biomass fuels, but with rapid advances in biotechnology and the potential synergies of bio-based technologies with efforts to sequester carbon, this topic is drawing increasing attention. Evaluation of the environmental consequences of bio-based strategies on a life cycle basis, however, remains underdeveloped.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

EPR is a policy strategy that shifts some or all of the obligationsfor the management of products at end-of-life (EOL) from waste generatorsand local governments to producers. This reallocation ofresponsibility is intended to internalize the cost of waste management inthe price of the product and to provide incentives for producers todesign more environmentally benign products. EPR takes its mostconspicuous form when producers must "take-back" products whenthey are discarded. Research at the Yale CIE includes the application ofthe insights generated in the literature on property rights andenvironmental policy to the conceptual framework of EPR and evaluation ofhow, when and why cities and other local government units might adopt EPR.