A case study of industrial symbiosis development using a middle-out approach

Ins Costa
*
, Paulo Ferro
IN Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, Instituto Superior Tcnico, Avenida Rovisco Pais, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 26 May 2009
Received in revised form
7 March 2010
Accepted 9 March 2010
Available online xxx
Keywords:
Industrial symbiosis
Middle-out approach
Relvo Eco Park
a b s t r a c t
Industrial symbiosis (IS) emerged as a collective, multi-industrial approach to improve economic and
environmental performance through the use of wastes/by-products as substitutes for raw materials. The
development of IS initiatives depends on the context in which they occur, characterised in terms of social,
economic, political, spatial and temporal embeddedness. As a consequence, the context can be inuenced
to become more supportive of IS through a continuous, interactive process, combining top-down
governmental directives and bottom-up spontaneous business initiatives. A strategy to develop and
enhance this process is explored in this paper and described by the authors as a middle-out approach.
Policies and policy instruments introduced by governmental agencies provide objectives and incen-
tives to businesses. The middle-out approach induces the development of a strategy to create positive
feedback loops among agents (e.g. government, industries) that may guide their actions into setting the
conditions to support IS emergence.
This paper provides a case study that discusses a regional development of IS in Portugal that highlights
critical factors for success in implementing IS, and shows that the middle-out approach can also be
understood as an extension and combination of previous research on context factors and planned/
spontaneous approaches to IS development.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Sustainability requires a new way of living or being in which
individuals, rms, governments and other institutions act respon-
sibly in taking care of the future as if it belonged to them today, by
equitably sharing the ecological resources on which the survival of
humanandother species depends (Ehrenfeld, 2000). Inthis context,
ecosystems provide the best available example of a sustainable
system, which is based on a cascade of energy and material cycles
channelled through relationships between organisms (Ehrenfeld,
2000). If we learn by example, the use of an ecosystem meta-
phor offers the argument that if anthropogenic systems learn from
ecosystems, they might be more sustainable. This is the underlying
metaphor of Industrial Ecology (IE), and it is relevant to examine,
measure and congure industrial setups as if they were natural,
mature and sustainable end-of-succession systems (Frosch and
Gallopoulos, 1989; Jelinski et al., 1992; Graedel, 1996; Korhonen,
2001; Korhonen et al., 2004). This metaphor suggests the system-
atic reuse of waste and by-products as an important contribution to
reduce the need for raw material extraction and to decrease the
pressure on environmental services (Erkman, 1997).
Industrial Symbiosis (IS) provides relevant contributions to IE by
adopting and implementing ecosystem traits such as connected-
ness, community, and cooperation (Ehrenfeld, 2000, 2007; Lozano,
2008) to promote sustainable resource use. The denition of IS
provided by Chertow (2000) encapsulates its main characteristics:
a close geographical interaction and collaborative effort in material/
energy resource management between companies in different lines
of work, based on the exchanges of wastes, services and/or utilities.
Such synergies can lower the throughput of resources and envi-
ronmental impacts, and improve net economical and environ-
mental output (Ehrenfeld and Gertler, 1997; Schwarz and
Steininger, 1997; Mirata, 2004).
Much of the research in IS focuses on the main drivers for its
success and some authors advocate key factors such as geographical
proximity, regulation exibility, economic rationality or a collabo-
rative culture (Chertow, 2000, 2007; Mirata, 2004; Desrochers,
2000a; Jacobsen and Anderberg, 2004). These factors depend on
a specic context, described interms of social, economical, technical
and political conditions, and on institutions (agents) capable of
inuencing such conditions (Mirata, 2005; Baas, 2008).
This is illustrated in the most famous example of IS develop-
ment which took place in Kalundborg, Denmark. Several factors
contributed to its success, and, for example, Jacobsen and
Anderberg (2004) suggest the following three: 1) there was
a network of formal and informal relationships between industrial
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 351 21 841 7893; fax: 351 21 849 6156.
E-mail address: icosta@dem.ist.utl.pt (I. Costa).
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managers and with regulatory authorities; 2) Danish waste legis-
lation is developed at the level of the municipality and it is based on
a negotiation process with local companies instead of xed tech-
nological and emissions standards; 3) since the 1970s, the Danish
government has introduced several regulations and economical
instruments (e.g. landll tax) aimed at pollution control, emissions
reduction and resource/energy efciency; This context provided
the exibility to enable IS as a possible waste management solution.
If it had been in another context, as Desrochers (2000b, page 365)
illustrated for the U.S. case, .the industrial symbiosis would have
been a very difcult, if not impossible, task.
The evolution of the IS network at Kalundborg has been fol-
lowed since the 1970s and new synergies continue to emerge,
facilitated by the coordination of the Symbiosis Institute. While
early exchanges were business opportunities driven by social
networking, later exchanges were driven by impending national
environmental regulations (Jacobsen and Anderberg, 2004). Busi-
nesses interacted with local government, suggesting their own
solutions to these challenges ee.g. exchanging and using waste and
by products as raw materials e and, as a result, obtained the
necessary legal permits. Therefore, a favourable social and organi-
zational context is necessary but not sufcient to promote IS
development. Environmental and waste management policies can
also be important to create a context that facilitates IS emergence.
The Kalundborg example also suggests that a spontaneous
emergence of IS can be triggered and further developed by
a dynamic process of government and industry interventions that
can transform the context. In Denmark, the national government
introduced successive environmental policies which led to business
initiatives in resource efciency. Particularly in the case of
Kalundborg, the social networking between managers and their
interaction with local government provided institutional support
for promoting and establishing the exchanges.
The research presented in this paper considers the process
factors that characterised, for example, the Kalundborg case study,
to elaborate on a strategy that may contribute to foster IS in other
contexts. This paper suggests that a favourable context for IS
development can be shaped through an interactive process
wherein the government, industries and other institutions are
guided towards aligning their strategies in support of collaborative
business strategies in resource management. This process requires
careful monitoring and feedback information to guide further
interventions and, as a consequence, government and industry led
initiatives converge on a specic context that provides an adequate
framework for IS development. This process is referred to by the
authors as a middle-out approach.
The remainder of this paper is divided in four sections. The next
section discusses the middle-out approach, whose implementation
is illustrated through a Portuguese case study that is described in
section 3 and discussed in section 4. The nal section presents the
main conclusions of the paper.
2. The middle-out approach as a process for creating
a favourable IS context
The uncovering of successful IS initiatives, such as that in
Kalundborg, has led to public and private interest in developing
such networks from scratch. As Chertow (2007) and Heeres et al.
(2004) point out, the majority were initiated and nancially sup-
ported by local or regional governments and typically involved
a multi-disciplinary team to evaluate industrial potential in
a locality or region. The goal was to mimic successful synergies or
arrange for resource-compatible neighbours. This type of IS
development strategy became known as the planned approach
(Chertow, 2007) but, as Gibbs and Deutz (Tudor et al., 2007)
observed, very few of these initiatives succeeded. This was usually
associated with a lack of active participation from businesses,
because their motivations and interests were poorly considered by
the project leaders.
The failure of planned initiatives reinforced the argument that
synergies emerged from self-organizing cooperative business
strategies. As Chertow (2007) observed, synergies are driven by
economic advantages offered by market conditions, with compa-
nies acting for their own benet instead of direct governmental
intervention. This approach became known as the spontaneous
organization model. Table 1 summarizes the main characteristics of
both planned and spontaneous approaches from the perspective of
the different agents involved.
Spontaneous networks appear to be more resilient than their
planned counterparts (e.g. Heeres et al. (2004)) although their
identication and network building is difcult as these synergies
are frequently masked as normal commercial transactions. The
uncovering, as Chertow (2007) points out, comes later through
the recognition, normally by a third party, of the associated envi-
ronmental benets. Additionally, authors such as Mirata (2005),
Baas (2008) and van Beers et al. (2007) suggest that the emer-
gence of spontaneous networks is dependent of the context in
which they occur. The context can be described as the social,
economical, technical, and political conditions embedded in
a geographical setting and, if these conditions are favourable to
support waste and industrial by-product exchanges, then IS has
more chances of development.
According to Mirata (2005), context factors can be inuenced
through conscious intervention of different agents, usually by
means of coordination activities to facilitate IS network develop-
ment and policies. The rst can inuence informational, organiza-
tional and social related conditions in relative short time frames,
and are typically delivered by research teams from universities or
by business associations (e.g. Curtin University in Australia (van
Beers et al., 2007), BCSD-UK in the Humber region (Mirata,
2004)). Policies have the potential to inuence all context condi-
tions, over longer time frames and geographical areas. For example,
Baas and Boons (2004) described that during a long period inwhich
the Dutch government implemented strong national environ-
mental regulations, many industry programmes were supported,
including the IS project in Rotterdam. Companies became moti-
vated to develop solutions that met regulation objectives while
gaining additional economic advantages.
We can thus assume that by delivering successive and adaptive
interventions, government, industry and other institutions can
inuence context conditions to motivate and support business
synergies. Although this seems commonsensical, to be able to guide
policy and industry interventions in order to specically support IS
development is a difcult task. Therefore, the research presented in
this paper supports that an adequate monitoring, facilitation and
knowledge dissemination on agents interventions and results can
contribute to induce positive feedback loops and guide further
actions to promote a context more supportive of IS emergence.
The overall process previously described is referred to by the
authors as the middle-out approach (see Fig. 1) The name was
inspired by MIT professor Joel Moses, who in a personal conversa-
tion with the authors suggested that industry would benet from
adopting a middle-out strategy, as an interactive process that was
able to integrate managers (top-down) and workers (bottom-up)
contributions to product development. The product platform(main
context) was set by managers, but workers were allowed enough
exibility toinclude their owndetails todifferentiate andimprove it.
The middle-out process requires the monitoring of all the
agents actions (see Table 2) and their impacts on the context, in
relation to IS. This information is fed back to the agents in order for
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them to develop tailored interventions or make adjustments that
can eventually support IS more effectively. With successive inter-
ventions the process acquires a dynamic, evolving nature.
The monitoring process includes the consideration of variables
such as: resource oriented policies; economic, regulatory and
voluntary instruments in resource management; mass ows of
waste/by-products generated at regional level; evolution of mate-
rial ows consumed by companies in a given region; number and
characterization of synergies established; potential of IS in a given
region; and funding mechanisms to support business collabora-
tions in resource management, among others.
The evolutionary characteristics typical of the middle-out
process can be observed in existing case studies if we allow a long
time scale of analysis. For example, as reported by Mirata (2004), IS
in the UK begun in 2000 with a local project by the BCSD-UK to
facilitate synergies among companies in the Humber region. Its
reported success soon attracted interest from other regions and, as
the project expanded, the UK Government decided to nancially
support it by creating the National Industrial Symbiosis Program
(NISP), which nowcovers the totality of the territory. Governments
incentives towards reuse/recycle have continued with the recent
introduction of regulations to provide more clarity on end of waste
status, to stop materials from being landlled unnecessarily and to
increase the use of waste as a resource (e.g. Waste Protocols
(Environment Agency UK, 2009)).
The research included in this paper provides further support of
the middle-out process through a case study of IS emergence in the
municipality of Chamusca, in Portugal, which is reported in the
next section. The involvement of the authors at IST-Technical
University of Lisbon allowed for a continuous monitoring of the
agents interventions, resulting in information that was dissemi-
nated together with IS related research at the local and national
levels, contributing to provide an appropriate context for IS to
prosper.
Data collection and report involved frequent interaction with
various agents (e.g. the Portuguese Environment Agency, local
government, regional development and coordination ofces,
industries, environmental associations, local community,
A B A C B
a b a
c d
Time
Governmental
agents
Nongovernmental
agents (e.g.
industry,
universities )
Phase I Phase II Phase III
Context conditions
Feedback
Feedback
Fig. 1. Schematic example of a middle-out approach to IS development.
Table 1
Interventions in planned and spontaneous approaches.
Agents Planned approach Spontaneous approach
Government Planning ordinances for eco-industrial developments,
involving the design, development and management of the site;
Economic incentives: tax cuts for adhering companies,
funding browneld/greeneld development, funding design teams;
Environmental regulation: water, air and
waste (target/limits requirements;
management process);
Government Institutions Economic incentives: nancing and/or subsidies;
Part of design teams/management;
Material Flow Analysis/By-product or waste matching;
Informational and decision tools developer;
Intermediary to establish synergy;
Emission of permits;
Private Associations
(e.g. Industry, Business, Environment)
Intermediary to nd tting companies; Network development and promotion;
Information exchange platform;
Mediation role;
Monitoring;
Universities Part of design teams;
Material Flow Analysis/By-product or waste matching;
Informational and decision tools developer;
Uncovering of linkages;
Economic/Environmental analysis of linkages;
Report of synergies;
Business Anchors at the development site;
Relocation at an industrial park;
High rated ows of waste type materials and/or
residual utilities; complementarities in material ows;
Engines for jobs and attracting more businesses;
Identication of business opportunities
in resource management;
Economic validation of linkages;
Funding of uncovering/discovery
opportunities e network promotion;
Regional networks/clusters;
R&D for reuse/recycling technologies;
Green twinners;
Source: Authors generated, based on information collected fromMirata (2005), Chertow(2007), Lyons (2005), van Beers et al. (2007), Chiu and Yong (2004), Tudor et al. (2007),
Baas and Boons (2004), Gibbs and Deutz (2007).
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universities) and an active participation in the municipalitys
development strategy. This included the collection, analysis and
reporting of qualitative and quantitative data, e.g. unstructured
interviews with different agents, EU and national legislation,
reports on industrial activity, updates on local government actions,
national databases on industrial waste generation and regional
databases on industrial activity.
3. A middle-out approach in Portugal: the Chamusca case
study
3.1. Phase 1: 2004
In January 2004 the Portuguese government issued the Law
Decree 3/2004, with the objective of calling for a new approach to
hazardous waste management. To prevent fragmented treatments
and minimize movements and transfers, the Government called for
the creation of an integrated recovery, treatment and elimination
centre for hazardous wastes (CIRVER). Companies were invited to
submit technical solutions which were economically viable and
environmentally safe.
To support the CIRVER development, the EU required the pre-
selection of a construction site by the end of that year. This selection
was not only based on geographical conditions, but also on how
local government would integrate this project into its development
strategy. Several municipalities were evaluated, but only the
municipality of Chamusca presented the necessary features. Cha-
musca is one of the largest municipal territories in Portugal, and
although it enjoys good environmental conditions, land availability
and relative proximity to urban centres (e.g. Lisbon, Santarm), in
the last decade the municipality has been facing a gradual erosion
of its social and economic base. This was caused by a decreasing
population, aging of its residents, and the decline of primary sector
activities.
To overcome this situation, the local government (Chamusca
Municipality Government e CMG) decided to analyse the munici-
palitys potential. On top of the positive aspects previously identi-
ed, Chamusca was the location of two large waste management
facilities with considerable impact at the regional level. The rst
company e referenced in this paper as MWMe consists of a multi-
municipal association that collects urban waste, including recy-
clables segregated at source, from 10 municipalities. In addition, it
recovers valuable materials from the main urban waste ow before
disposing it to its landll. The second facility is a non hazardous
industrial waste landll, operated by a private company referenced
in this paper as IWM.
Based on this information, the CMG acted to secure the instal-
lation of the CIRVER in the municipality. Local government orga-
nized several town hall meetings in which CIRVER proponents
presented their projects and answered questions from the pop-
ulation. Other meetings followed, involving industry experts and
governmental agencies. Additionally, an 1800 hectare area was
reserved for industrial development. This area already included the
MWM and IWM facilities and land plots were made available at
accessible prices in order to attract more investment to the region.
3.2. Phase 2: 2005e2006
In 2005, the results for the CIRVER bid were announced. Two
technological solutions were selected and both infrastructures
Table 2
Interventions in a middle out approach.
Agents Interventions
Government Setting successive objectives to improve the environmental performance of the economy:
- Regulatory instruments: e.g. emission caps, landll bans, reduction targets;
- Economic instruments: e.g. landll/incineration taxes, incentives for achieving target reductions;
- Voluntary instruments: e.g. resource efciency programs, cleaner technologies programs;
Flexible waste management regulation: e.g. focus on the end result of
the reuse/recycling process (the product) instead of the technology used,
integrate stakeholders in detailing the necessary ordinances for waste management.
Public Institutions (e.g. government development agencies) Adaptive governmental support to bottom led initiatives (e.g. nancial, institutional);
Disseminate results to government e monitoring;
Facilitation: assist in the uncovering of synergies: e.g. data collection;
assist in establishing new synergies
Private Associations (e.g. Industry, Business, Environment) Establishment of industrial environmental programs/collaboration projects:
e.g. CO
2
reduction, energy efciency, resource efciency;
Feedback between business and government;
Agility of IS development: establishment of IS industrial programs/projects;
promoting discussion platforms among members;
Facilitation: assist in the uncovering of synergies: e.g. data collection;
assist in establishing new synergies: e.g. material ow analysis,
economic and environmental assessment, mediation
Universities Monitoring governmental policies, business strategies, etc; Feedback information to agents;
R&D in waste management technologies;
Facilitation: assist in the uncovering of synergies: e.g. data collection;
assist in establishing new synergies: e.g. material ow analysis,
economic and environmental assessment
Business Anchors or champions;
Close relations to other business managers (e.g. value chain, suppliers, industry associations);
Feedback information to community and local government;
Feedback of economic and environmental advantages of partnerships;
Feedback on existent collaborations in resource management and advantages;
Desirable expansion of network to obtain new advantages (agility of the network)
Source: Authors generated, based on information collected fromMirata (2005, 2004), Chertow(2007), Baas (2008), Lyons (2005), van Beers et al. (2007), Chiu and Yong (2004),
Tudor et al. (2007), Baas and Boons (2004), Costa and Ferro (2008), Gibbs and Deutz (2007), Park et al. (2008).
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would be built in Chamusca. Soon after, several companies
approached the CMG with projects and requests to locate their
business in the municipality. The rst company to move in was
a plastics recycler (company A) and a major factor for its settling
was the synergy identied together with MWM. Company A and
MWMagreed that the later would use its collection routes to gather
and separate agricultural plastic (e.g. greenhouse lining) from the
main waste ow and deliver it to company A to be processed into
pellets.
With these developments the CMG decided to capitalize on the
emergent capacity of local waste management solutions. However,
local government also wanted to avoid a purely economical
approach based on less sustainable waste management techniques
(e.g. landll, incineration based) since this could easily go against
the best interests of the community. With this objective in mind,
CMG representatives decided to engage different agents (e.g.
government institutions, companies, universities) and attended
seminars organized by other public institutions (e.g. municipalities,
environment agency), which often included presentations made by
researchers from the university, policy makers and industries. This
allowed the CMG to collect important information to craft a more
sustainable vision for the municipalitys development strategy.
It was in one of these seminars, organized by Sines Municipal
Government, that local government was introduced to the concept
of Industrial Ecology and Industrial Symbiosis by the authors of this
paper. As a consequence, IST (a leading engineering faculty fromthe
Technical University of Lisbon) was invited to be a strategic advisor
for the CMG. The research group helped to establish and dissemi-
nate information about IE and IS principles to local agents, and
proceeded to analyse how IE and IS could be better integrated into
the municipalitys strategy. These efforts resulted in the Relvo Eco
Industrial Park (REIP) project, in 2006. The park would harbour the
incoming CIRVER infrastructures and provide the basis for
a resource recovery cluster of industries. In addition, the vision for
the future included subsequent phases intended to develop infor-
mational and technical based services to stimulate and support
collaborative business strategies, within the REIP and across the
region.
Later in 2006 the Portuguese government issued a new waste
management regulation (Law Decree 78/2006), which detailed the
necessary requirements for the handling and managing of waste. It
also introduced landll and incineration taxes and the guiding
principles for an Organized Waste Market (OWM). These instru-
ments are important to inuence the policy context to support IS
development. A landll or incineration tax raises disposal costs,
which contributes to make recycling prices more competitive. In
the case of the OWM, its principles are that of a voluntary program,
supported by the Government, to stimulate the market for reusable
and recyclable materials and products. In mid 2007 the Govern-
ment invited industry to submit proposals for the management of
the program. Proponents had to present their business plans for
functioning and management, with an emphasis on the nancial
sustainability of the program. Additionally, proponents had to
present their ideas as to howto stimulate the market for recyclables
and recycled products, in particular how to safeguard buyers
expectations of material quality.
3.3. Phase 3: 2007e2008
With the REIP formally established, the business proposals to
locate or relocate businesses at the park continued (e.g. dismantlers
of end of life vehicles, biomass processers, fertilizer producers,
metal reclamation projects, construction materials manufacturers,
among others). A few large scale projects also became interested in
the REIP, including an integrated medical waste management
centre and a refuse derived fuel plant. By early 2009, 25 companies
were set to be developed at the REIP or were already operating at
the site.
Local government continued to promote several public and
business meetings to disseminate information and facilitate the
dialogue between agents (e.g. national government, public insti-
tutions, investors, environmental NGOs, universities, companies
and the community). This included the organization of national
scientic and engineering waste management conferences. As
a consequence, some collaborative strategies began to emerge, e.g.
a paper pulp producer in the vicinity of the REIP delivers ashes from
its boiler to a fertilizer producer in the REIP and receives agricul-
tural waste from local farms to use as fuel (see Fig. 2 for more
examples).
The IST research group continued to monitor the evolution of
the middle-out process and disseminating information on the
developments in Chamusca, both nationally and abroad (e.g. Costa
and Ferro, 2008). IST has been continuously working on uncov-
ering existing kernels of symbiosis in the country, using national
waste management data in collaboration with the Portuguese
environment agency (APA). At the regional level, it is currently
working in assessing development scenarios for IS using regional
data on industrial activity, in collaboration with the CMG and the
Tagus Lezria intermunicipal development agency (CILMT).
3.4. Future developments
A major challenge for the development of the eco industrial park
in Chamusca is related to the difculties in acquiring permits for
industrial development, which are issued by the Lisbon and Tagus
Valley regional development agency (CCDR-LVT). However,
a benet from the middle-out process was the positive feedback
provided to the CCDR-LVT, which motivated this governmental
institution to consider the REIP as a credible and pivotal project for
the regions development. As a consequence, the bureaucratic
delays associated to licensing, permitting and other requests to the
institution will be alleviated in the near future.
Also, the motivation for using waste and by-products as raw
material substitutes is expected to grow. At the local level, the CMG
continues to receive business proposals on a weekly basis. Agree-
ments have been made between companies operating at the park
and future entrants (e.g. use of waste water treatment sludge for
fertilizer production, the use of CO
2
exhaust for microalgae
production) (see Fig. 2 for more examples).
Additionally, national government is preparing future inter-
ventions that can inuence the national policy context even further.
By the end of 2010, national government must implement the latest
EU Directive on Waste (2008/98/EC), which mandates member
countries to develop policy instruments to support by-product
commercialization and improve waste reuse. Furthermore, the EU
requests that countries develop concise technical rules that clarify
when a discarded material legally ceases to be considered a waste
or when it is considered a by-product.
In this context, we foresee that the REIP will become even more
relevant as a resource recovery centre with national impact. In turn,
this can improve the possibility of further industrial investment
and support from national public institutions.
4. Discussing the middle-out process at Chamusca
In order to facilitate the discussion of the case study, Fig. 3
represents the evolution of the major governmental, business and
university interventions that inuenced the context in the last ve
years. Additionally, the main agents and interventions are detailed
in Table 3.
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If we put this case study in a European IS context, such as the
Dutch EIPs (Eilering and Vermeulen, 2004) or Kalundborg
(Jacobsen and Anderberg, 2004), it is possible to distinguish them
with a set of differences classied in the following topics: 1)
governmental framework; 2) policy context; 3) waste management
requirements.
When it comes to governmental framework, Costa et al. (in
press) has extensively discussed that a decentralized system of
Fig. 3. Evolution of the middle out process in the case study presented.
Fig. 2. Development of synergies at Chamusca.
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government can provide some additional facilitation to IS devel-
opment. According to these authors, in Portugal, waste manage-
ment regulation is developed and implemented at the national
level, whereas in Denmark, by contrast, this is done by the
municipality and in collaboration with industry. This means that
any intervention needed to change the regulatory context in
Portugal has to come from the national government.
At the level of the policy context, Costa et al. (in press) further
demonstrated that, although under the same umbrella of EU
environmental policy, different national policies in waste
management can emerge among EU members. This results in
differences in the supportive context available to IS development.
For example, in the Netherlands the landll tax was implemented
in the 1990s and landll bans on all wastes suited for recovery
(Eionet, 2009). In addition, the Dutch government also imple-
mented end of waste criteria in 2001 (SenterNovem, 2004).
Portugal, however, introduced the landll tax only in 2006, limits
landll bans to used tyres and liquid waste and does not have any
end-of-waste criteria implemented (Costa et al., in press). This
means that, for those particular instruments, the Netherlands has
been inuencing the market to favour recycling and reuse for
a longer period than Portugal.
The same argument can be made for the implementation of
business programs directed at coordinating and facilitating
collaborative business strategies in waste management. In the
Netherlands, national government implemented these programs
together with the landll tax and other regulations (Eilering and
Vermeulen, 2004). In Portugal, since these programs are not yet
operating, coordination is done on a case by case basis. In Cha-
musca, coordination activities have been assumed by the local
government.
Finally, in the case of waste management requirements, the
exchange of waste materials between different companies in
Portugal is legally supported only if the recipient is a certied waste
Table 3
Interventions in the middle-out approach at Chamusca.
Agents Interventions
National government Law Decree 3/2004 e call to business to develop solutions for integrated management of hazardous wastes (CIRVER);
Law Decree 178/2006 e mandatory reporting of waste data; call to business to develop the Organized
Waste Market; obligation of best available technologies for waste treatment to obtain permits; landll tax;
EU Waste Directive: integration of by-product and end of waste provisions into Portuguese waste law (end of 2010);
Improved access to the EIP and freeway /reduction of transportation times attracting companies to the EIP
APA Environment protection agency: collaboration with IST in developing waste information system development
and implementation (SGIR/SIRER); uncovering existent IS kernels in Portugal
CCDR LVT Lisbon and Tagus Valley regional development agency: includes the REIP as a central project in the
LVT Region Ordinance Plan 2010;
Imposes limitations of land use for industrial construction purposes
CCDR Alentejo Alentejo regional development agency: funding for best strategies on regional collective efciencies in the REIP
CILMT Intermunicipal development agency: institutional support to the CMG on infrastructural related issues
(utilities related) and nancial petitions for EIP related projects
CMG Assessment of municipal strengths and weaknesses; engages stakeholders in order to develop regional strategy;
CIRVER location proponent; land plots at favourable prices to attract businesses to the municipality;
Integrates IE and IS in vision for the municipality; formal collaboration with university;
Promotes meetings, visits, conferences and workshops concerning IE, IS and the REIP among diverse
local, regional and national stakeholders (especially business, community and university);
Regional funding for REIP projects (proposals made with stakeholders)
IST University Strategy for the REIP, based on the IE and IS paradigms (with CMG);
Uncovery of existent IS kernels in national territory (with CILMT and APA);
Participation in public discussion forums/workshops/conferences/meetings with REIP companies
Quercus (environmental NGO) Collaboration with CMG in disseminating information concerning the REIP project;
Awards the CMG with the 2005 Quercus prize;
OWM Business oriented program, to facilitate and promote waste and by-product exchange; development,
coordination and nancing model to be proposed by businesses
CIRVER 1/CIRVER 2 Request for installation at Chamusca; economic anchors of the REIP; nancial support for social
infrastructures in the community;
Active participation in public discussion forums/REIP meetings;
Complementary decomposer services: acid and solvent regeneration; oil recycling
IWM Non urban wastes management facility; available to collaborate in reuse of soils for landll coating;
available to explore an additional sorting centre on site;
Financial support for social infrastructures in the community
MWM Urban waste management facility. Collects, sorts and sends to recycling: plastic, glass, paper, metals,
tires, cork, batteries, biomass, WEEE, uorescent tubes;
Synergy with company A for agricultural plastics; synergy with paper pulp producer (biomass as fuel)
Businesses ELV disassemblers; plastic recycler; battery recycler; fertilizer producers; construction materials producer;
aluminium slag recycler; packaging processers; container refurbishment; aviary; biomass processers;
construction and demolition waste recycler;
Synergies already established through contacts within REIP and local businesses (e.g. food waste and ashes
for fertilizer production)
Large companies (future anchors) RDF plant; medical waste integrated treatment and recovery centre;
Synergies already discussed regarding materials for RDF manufacture and use of CO
2
exhaust for microalgae production
Notes: the cells in grey are governmental based agents; the cells in white are universities, NGO and industrial agents.
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management operator. To obtain the permit companies must have
specic technologies for recycling and waste management, as
demanded by the Portuguese Environment Agency. Therefore, for
an established manufacturer, the potential benets of raw material
substitution could not compensate for the investment in technol-
ogies and permits. This situation has limited waste handling to
businesses whose primary economic activities are recovery, dis-
assembling, treatment and disposal. In Denmark, for example, this
type of technological requirement does not exist (Costa et al.,
in press): manufacturers only have to demonstrate that waste
materials are efciently treated, which provides a exible techno-
logical context for IS development. Whereas in Portugal, recovery
related businesses have to be engaged in order to facilitate the
development of waste and by-product exchanges.
Given the challenges associated with the Portuguese context for
IS development, it was necessary to inuence contextual factors in
order to stimulate and support emergent synergies. Therefore, the
exchanges observed in Chamusca were the result of a successive,
interactive process of governmental, industry, university and other
institutions interventions throughout the ve years observed: that
is, the middle-out process.
To inuence the context several interventions were deployed at
the national and local levels. At the national level, government
inuenced the policy and economic context in waste management,
while at the local level the CMG coordinated the activities to
inuence social, economical and informational factors. Business
intervention was also addressed primarily at the local level, by
opening the dialogue with local community and attracting further
investments to the municipality. Finally, by contributing to the local
coordination activities and to the uncovering of IS kernels at
national level, the University was able to successfully monitor the
process and provide the feedback of information between agents at
multiple levels.
Over the ve years of monitoring this middle-out process, the
policy context was shaped by the national government in two main
actions: rst, by providing national objectives on management
solutions for hazardous wastes and second, by deploying economic
and voluntary instruments (e.g. landll tax, OWM) that penalize
landll/incineration disposal and stimulate the use of recyclable
materials and products. In both interventions businesses were
given enough exibility to present their own solutions.
Future governmental interventions in 2010 related to the EU
Directive on Waste are expected to provide further incentives for
reuse and recycling strategies. With the integration of the by-
product and end of waste provisions, several materials which
were once considered waste can be traded as a normal commodity.
This will simplify the requirements for special permits or tech-
nologies, contribute to reduce business expenditures and making
reuse/recycling options nancially more appealing.
Future coordination activities associated with the OWM could
also provide an additional support for IS at the national level. The
OWM, expected to begin operation in 2010, is a nationwide
voluntary instrument with a very similar approach to that of such
programs as NISP. Since it is developed by industry for industry, it
could lower some of the barriers associated with the uncovering or
facilitation of IS. With the national government supporting the
process, business and environmental interests are safeguarded,
contributing to the reduction of risks associated to the exchanges. It
is also important to mention that the IST research group associated
to the monitoring and facilitation process at Chamusca was one of
the stakeholders consulted by the governments taskforce in the
process of developing the overall framework of the OWM.
Finally, with ISTs ongoing efforts to uncover existent kernels of
symbiosis at the national level, the dissemination of information on
IS achievements and benets will continue. This will contribute to
fuel the middle-out process, by directing efforts towards the
consolidation and expansion of these synergies, as Chertow (2007)
and other authors suggest.
At the local level, the municipality and IST have been strongly
engaged in organizing various events to motivate the dialogue
between agents (e.g. informal meetings, workshops and confer-
ences). The main objective is to establish and maintain a culture of
cooperation between companies and disseminate information on
business opportunities, technologies and research projects,
including IE and IS related subjects. In addition, the municipality
also sought to further assist in IS emergence by targeting busi-
nesses which were already licensed as waste management opera-
tors, which lowered the technical barriers in relation to potential
exchanges.
These actions are consistent with the suggestions of several
authors [e.g. Korhonen et al., 2004; Mirata, 2005; Parto, 2000;
Takahashi, 2003] about local public institutions assuming
a central position in the development of synergies: they are more
aware of local conditions; they can provide a bridge between
national government and business and, depending on the govern-
ment framework, they can develop tailored policies to support
emergent synergies.
The local community and companies were also important
agents, particularly in inuencing the social and economical
context of the municipality. The involvement of the local commu-
nity in the discussion of the municipalitys strategy contributed to
the absence of not-in-my-backyard effects, which are quite
common in Portugal. In the case of the companies, their pull to the
eco industrial park was mainly induced by the presence large
industries, such has the CIRVER. In this manner, companies were
able to 1) capitalize on the public investment placed around the
CIRVER (e.g. infrastructure, utilities and services); 2) take advan-
tage on the growth of waste materials converging to the region,
and; 3) the proximity to disposal structures. Therefore, it is possible
to refer to the CIRVER as the economic anchors of the eco
industrial park.
Synergies gradually emerged from the close interaction
between managers, mostly promoted by the CMG. The recovery
nature of their activities was also a facilitating factor, as discussed
earlier in this section e the majority of REIP companies have the
necessary permits to handle wastes. Furthermore, because many
processes are complementary (e.g. the batteries removed from the
end of life vehicles go to the battery disassembler) and are
geographically close, they provide an economic and technological
context suitable for companies to continue in exchanging wastes.
In light of present and future actions of the agents analysed, the
middle-out process for IS development in Portugal will continue to
be monitored. We anticipate that this process will eventually
consolidate a contextual framework that is able to support syner-
gies at multiple scales within the country.
5. Conclusions
Research conducted in the eld of industrial symbiosis often
demonstrates that synergies emerge from spontaneous collabora-
tive strategies between different types of industries. However, the
literature also recognizes that is important to have a context that
enables these collaborations to emerge. The research presented in
this paper contributes to this discussion, by introducing the concept
of a middle-out approach for creating a favourable context for IS
development.
In a middle-out approach, agents from governmental, industry,
university and other institutions converge in a positive feedback
process to create an adequate context that is able to support IS
development. This is achieved by a successive, iterative process of
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interventions which can inuence context factors at different
levels. By monitoring these interventions and observing its effects,
information is fed back to agents, which can then introduce or
readjust further actions.
A case study of an ongoing middle-out approach was presented.
It describes the successive governmental, university and business
interventions, at the national and local level, during a ve year
period in the municipality of Chamusca, in Portugal. National
government introduced the objectives and policy instruments,
leaving businesses free to provide solutions to those challenges.
Local government was able to inuence the social context, at the
local level, by promoting events of various natures in which agents
interacted (e.g. community, industry, university). By establishing an
eco industrial park to harbour important waste management
infrastructures, industries were attracted to the region and syner-
gies began to emerge. Local government and the university moni-
tored the process evolution and disseminated information to
agents at all levels, in order to foster IS development.
We conclude that without the interventions reported in the case
study the national and local context would not have been as
supportive to IS as it is now. Therefore, it is possible to suggest
a middle-out process to enable IS development, that should include
the following steps: 1) assessment of the national and local contexts
initial conditions; 2) identicationof the principal agents that should
be involved; 3) identication of current and expected interventions
from agents (e.g. policy instruments, coordination activities); 4)
monitoring of actions and contextual impacts; and, 5) feedback of
information to agents in order to assist in further interventions.
The development of IS promoted by the middle-out approach in
Portugal contributed to the success of the REIP, in that it changed
the context at Chamusca (with more than 50 million Euros of
private investments and 252 jobs created) and is contributing to
improve national performance in waste management.
Acknowledgements
This research is funded by FCT e Portuguese Science and
Technology Foundation. The authors acknowledge the collabora-
tion of Chamusca Municipality Government and the companies
currently integrated in the REIP project.
The authors also wish to thank professors Joel Moses (MIT) and
Josh Jacobs (MIT) for their contributions and reviews to the paper.
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