PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Greece produces more than 4.5 million tonnes of residential and commercial urban waste annually, which is equivalent to 440 kg/yr per person, and this is increasing steadily. Thirty-nine existing licensed landfill sites serve 53% of the population, with the remainder served by 1 453 unauthorised sites. In 2006, municipalities recycled 266 000 tonnes of packaging material and 19.7 tonnes of printed paper. While this is promising, more comprehensive and effective waste management programmes are required. In Viotia, the prefecture is actively seeking best practice measures to divert waste away from landfills. Industrial Symbiosis (IS) is an innovative environmental practice that brings together businesses and public sector bodies to significantly improve cross-industry resource efficiency. It enables the commercial trading of materials, energy and water, including wastes. It also involves the sharing of assets, logistics and expertise.
OBJECTIVES
The eSYMBIOSIS project’s general objective was to produce a web-based platform for Industrial Symbiosis (IS), to enable communication between potential partners and to offer automated matching of partners according to economic and environmental objectives. The project aimed to consolidate the valuable knowledge base established by numerous national IS programmes, to create a new automated service to facilitate the implementation of IS as an environmental policy at all levels. The tool and related training activities should increase the participation of public authorities and SMEs in the numerous market-oriented IS activities in Viotia, Greece, and elsewhere in Europe. Ultimately, the project expected to reduce both the consumption of natural resources and the quantity of waste going to landfill in Viotia. In the long-term, the project hoped to generate a critical mass of champions to support the new paradigm and its extended use, facilitated by a dedicated IS forum. Finally, the project aimed to engage with research and development groups with capabilities to advance the platform’s innovative features.
RESULTS
The eSYMBIOSIS project created a web-based platform to facilitate Industrial Symbiosis (IS) with the aim of promoting more efficient use of resources, by reducing the consumption of raw materials/natural resources and the quantity of waste going to landfill. The eSymbiosis platform was implemented in the region of Viotia in Greece, where it identified many synergies, so facilitating communication between potential partners with matching economic and environmental objectives. One industry’s outputs could therefore become another industries inputs.
Experience from other IS communities was used to create the necessary baseline and to facilitate the IS implementation in Greece. For example, a project report analysed industrial symbiosis practices in the UK, including database solutions, waste stream classification, and the technologies used to exploit IS synergies. Through a sophisticated ontology, the eSymbiosis platform identifies possible synergies using data on the existing material inflows and outflows of the registered industries in Viotia, and matches those with compatible waste-disposal and resource requirements. The creation of an automated platform, to identify possible synergies between industries in a specific region, was the main project innovation.
The automated process to find the best matches takes into account a range of criteria, including distance between resources and users, and the explicit properties of materials describing by each user. Once registered, a company can access a menu featuring the types of waste offered, or requested, and the location of the user. The platform was launched with 75 participating industries.
Representatives from the registered industries, authorities and other stakeholders in the region of Viotia were trained in the use of the eSymbiosis platform, at two training events and through a users’ handbook. This built capacity in the region to facilitate the update of the IS approach. The project disseminated its findings through demonstration workshops, an international conference, publications, leaflets, a layman’s report and its website. The eSymbiosis platform has good potential for use in other Greek and European regions with similar characteristics. Capacity building and dissemination activities served to trigger greater industry interest in creating an Industrial Symbiosis network. The project’s knowledge-based approach has the potential for reporting measurable social environmental and economic benefits. IS is expected to have a great impact on the regional environment and a positive effect on other activities in the local economy. In the Viotia region, fertile land is used to produce a multitude of agricultural products, such as cotton, tobacco, olives, cereals, legumes, vegetables, fruits and nuts, though pollution due to industrial waste is causing significant damage to agriculture. Reducing the amount of industrial waste could therefore benefit agriculture. In the survey performed at the start of the project, it was found that 139 industrial units generate high volumes of wastewater. The total amount of such wastes generated reaches 9 044 m3/day. Most of this is generated during industrial processes, particularly by the leather processing and textiles, food and beverage industries, and basic metal production sectors. If widely replicated, the eSYMBIOSIS project’s IS solutions could contribute to a range of EU policies relating to waste reduction and circular economy, including the Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC).
A range of indirect socio-economic benefits could arise from the implementation of the eSymbiosis platform in a region, such as the creation and safeguarding of jobs, the creation of new businesses, and business cost savings.
