Industrial Symbiosis

What is Industrial Symbiosis?

The circular economy offers an opportunity to reinvent our economy, making it more sustainable and competitive. This will bring benefits for European businesses, industries, and citizens alike.

In order to make Europe’s economy cleaner and more competitive, the Commission is delivering ambitious measures to cut resource use, reduce waste and boost recycling. In particular, the European Commission adopted an ambitious Circular Economy Package, which includes revised legislative proposals on waste to stimulate Europe's transition towards a circular economy which will boost global competitiveness, foster sustainable economic growth and generate new jobs. The Circular Economy Package consists of an EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy (COM/2015/0614) that establishes a concrete and ambitious programme of actions, with measures covering the whole cycle: from production and consumption to waste management and the market for secondary raw materials. The proposed actions will contribute to "closing the loop" of product lifecycles through greater recycling and re-use, and bring benefits for both the environment and the economy. Key elements of the revised waste proposal include, among the others, concrete measures to promote re-use and stimulate industrial symbiosis, a strategy addressed at making the residues of one activity available for another one, at improving resource efficiency and the at encouraging the transition towards the circular economy. The principle behind industrial symbiosis is that instead of being thrown away or destroyed, surplus resources generated by an industrial process are captured then redirected for use as a ‘new’ input into another process by one or more other companies, providing a mutual benefit or symbiosis. This approach is not only a potential factor of competitiveness for industrial activities, but also a developing asset, in which all resources are exploited locally and not dissipated, delegated or given away to third parties.