Marian Chertow
Associate Professor of Industrial Environmental Management, Director of the Program on Solid Waste Policy, and Director of the Industrial Environmental Management Program
Research Statement
My research focuses on evaluating public and private benefits of cooperative environmental business practices at the inter-firm level and, ultimately, whether and how these practices might foster a shift to environmental sustainability. Drawing on industrial ecology approaches, my research investigates: 1) industrial symbiosis as a complex test case of cooperative resource management in business clusters, 2) the potential of industrial ecology to underpin ideas of the proposed Circular Economy in China, and 3) the role of technology in accelerating or retarding environmental impact. These are described below.Industrial symbiosis
Industrial symbiosis represents an innovative form of cooperative enterprise including the physical exchanges of materials, water, and energy across companies in place-based “industrial ecosystems.” Specific projects including fieldwork in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Asia involve a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods from various disciplines to investigate how industrial ecosystems emerge, develop, function, change, and sometimes become self-sustaining. These include:
- Quantitative analysis of the amount and distribution of costs and benefits to private actors of resource exchanges and whether firms are better off pursuing these exchanges or going it alone.
- Application of multi-level and multi-scale analysis in selected industrial ecosystems
- Updating industrial ecology and industrial symbiosis with recent findings from ecosystem ecology and the important role played by the dynamic paradigm offered by the behavior of complex adaptive ecosystems
- Using social network analysis as a means of investigating the role of social capital (compared with a strict economic view) in the operations of industrial clusters (with PhD student Weslynne Ashton).
- Drawing out the concept of agglomeration economies – benefits derived from the spontaneous co-location of industry – to assess whether industrial symbiosis encompasses environmental externalities not previously counted.
- Assessment and measurement of transaction costs especially in Chinese industrial parks (with PhD student Shi Han).
- Development of information tools to track material, energy, and water flows initiated by my research group combining a web-enabled GIS system and geodatabase with data collected from companies in Puerto Rico.
Industrial ecology and the circular economy in China
The Chinese are officially pursuing very high efficiency in resource flows – dubbed the “circular economy” - as a way to improve quality of life within natural and economic constraints. I am investigating the extent to which industrial ecology can provide key intellectual foundations for this new industrialization model at the inter-firm level and the challenges that may be presented by differences in governance, ownership structures, and cultural issues. My research group has examined five Chinese industrial parks, conducted a Delphi survey among Chinese policy leaders about the path the circular economy law is likely to follow, and I have discussed these issues at the only nationally designated circular economy research center at Nankai University where I am a visiting professor.
Environmental technology
Continuing my earlier work on commercialization of environmental technology and the IPAT equation I continue these pursuits including with the on-line Encyclopedia of Earth portal wiki, which, with suitable feedback, will extend thinking on IPAT and the role of technology and environment.
