Industrial Ecology and the Greening of Business History

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explain and argue for a new conceptual approach for thinking about the history of business- a new way of thinking about business that will promote the integration of business history with environmental history and, in a broader sense, the history of society. The new approach is based on the concept of industrial ecology. Industrial ecology is a systems approach to thinking abouthe relationship between industrial activity and the natural world that was developed in the late 1980s by engineers seeking more effective ways to approach the challenge of minimizing the harmful environmental impacts of industrial waste. It is based on the recognition that the material and energy flows that define the operation of industrial systems are analogous to the materials and energy flows that define the operation of biological ecosystems. Just as a biological ecosystem is the whole system of biological and chemical processes that convert carbon, hydrogen, and other materials into the food and energy on which the plant and animalife in a biological ecosystem depend, so an industrial ecosystem is the whole system of physical processes that, through the application of labor and capital, convert raw materials and energy into finished products and waste. This system of industrial materials and energy flows parallels and is intimately interconnected with the larger system of the earth's natural water, carbon/oxygen, nitrogen, and sulfur and other materials cycles. The industrial flows are also intertwined with the biological cycles by which living things move through an endless process of birth, life, death, decomposition, and reconstitution into living