Industrial metabolism is a concept to describe the material and energy turnover of industrial systems. It was proposed by
Robert Ayres in analogy to the biological
metabolism
Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run cell ...
as "the whole integrated collection of physical processes that convert
raw material
A raw material, also known as a feedstock, unprocessed material, or primary commodity, is a basic material that is used to produce goods, finished goods, energy, or intermediate materials that are feedstock for future finished products. As feedst ...
s and
energy
In physics, energy (from Ancient Greek: ἐνέργεια, ''enérgeia'', “activity”) is the quantitative property that is transferred to a body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of work and in the form of heat a ...
, plus
labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
, into finished
product
Product may refer to:
Business
* Product (business), an item that serves as a solution to a specific consumer problem.
* Product (project management), a deliverable or set of deliverables that contribute to a business solution
Mathematics
* Produ ...
s and
waste
Waste (or wastes) are unwanted or unusable materials. Waste is any substance discarded after primary use, or is worthless, defective and of no use. A by-product, by contrast is a joint product of relatively minor economic value. A waste prod ...
s..." In analogy to the biological concept of metabolism, which is used to describe the whole of chemical reactions in, for example, a cell to maintain its functions and reproduce itself, the concept of industrial metabolism describes the chemical reactions, transport processes, and manufacturing activities in industry.
Industrial metabolism presupposes a connection between different industrial activities by seeing them as part of a larger system, such as a material cycle or the supply chain of a commodity. System scientists, for example in
industrial ecology
Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resource ...
, use the concept as paradigm to study the
flow of materials or energy through the industrial system in order to better understand
supply chain
In commerce, a supply chain is a network of facilities that procure raw materials, transform them into intermediate goods and then final products to customers through a distribution system. It refers to the network of organizations, people, acti ...
s, the sources and causes of
emissions
Emission may refer to:
Chemical products
* Emission of air pollutants, notably:
**Flue gas, gas exiting to the atmosphere via a flue
** Exhaust gas, flue gas generated by fuel combustion
** Emission of greenhouse gases, which absorb and emit rad ...
, and the linkages between the industrial and the wider
socio-technological
Sociotechnology (short for "social technology") is the study of processes on the intersection of society and technology. Vojinović and Abbott define it as "the study of processes in which the social and the technical are indivisibly combined".
So ...
system.
[S. Anderberg (1998), "Industrial metabolism and linkages between economics, ethics, and the environment", ''Ecological Economics'', 24, pp 311-320]
Industrial metabolism is a subsystem of the
anthropogenic
Anthropogenic ("human" + "generating") is an adjective that may refer to:
* Anthropogeny, the study of the origins of humanity
Counterintuitively, anthropogenic may also refer to things that have been generated by humans, as follows:
* Human im ...
or socioeconomic metabolism, which also comprises non-industrial human activities in households or the public sector.
See also
*
Anthropogenic metabolism Anthropogenic metabolism, also referred to as metabolism of the anthroposphere, is a term used in industrial ecology, material flow analysis, and waste management to describe the material and energy turnover of human society. It emerges from the ap ...
*
Autopoiesis
The term autopoiesis () refers to a system capable of producing and maintaining itself by creating its own parts.
The term was introduced in the 1972 publication '' Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living'' by Chilean biologist ...
*
Dematerialization (economics)
Dematerialization is a social science term which describes the process of making more goods with lesser material required. The term itself possessed multi-accentuality, which allows it to be diversely explained by different fields of social scienc ...
*
Energy accounting Energy accounting is a system used to measure, analyze and report the energy consumption of different activities on a regular basis. This is done to improve energy efficiency, and to monitor the environment impact of energy consumption.
Energy man ...
*
Industrial ecology
Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modelled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resource ...
*
Material flow accounting Material flow accounting (MFA) is the study of material flows on a national or regional scale. It is therefore sometimes also referred to as regional, national or economy-wide material flow analysis
Material flow analysis (MFA), also referred to as ...
*
Material flow analysis
Material flow analysis (MFA), also referred to as substance flow analysis (SFA), is an analytical method to quantify flows and stocks of materials or substances in a well-defined system. MFA is an important tool to study the bio-physical aspects o ...
*
Information metabolism
Information metabolism, sometimes referred to as informational metabolism or energetic-informational metabolism, is a psychological theory of interaction between biological organisms and their environment, developed by Polish psychiatrist Antoni K ...
*
Social metabolism
Social metabolism or socioeconomic metabolism is the set of flows of materials and energy that occur between nature and society, between different societies, and within societies. These human-controlled material and energy flows are a basic featu ...
*
Urban metabolism Urban metabolism is a model to facilitate the description and analysis of the flows of the materials and energy within cities, such as undertaken in a material flow analysis of a city. It provides researchers with a metaphorical framework to study ...
References
Further reading
Industrial Metabolism: Restructuring for Sustainable Development
{{Recycling
Industrial processes
Analogy