Waste tips and tipping points: governing the timelines of industrial symbiosis

Industrial symbiosis, use of residue from one entity as input to another, can offer benefits of resource, energy, emissions and/or economic efficiencies. Research has focused on assessing potential benefits, understanding... [ view full abstract ]

Industrial symbiosis, use of residue from one entity as input to another, can offer benefits of resource, energy, emissions and/or economic efficiencies. Research has focused on assessing potential benefits, understanding case studies of, and analysing barriers to, industrial symbiosis, primarily on a regional scale. Recent work has extended interest to wider scales and to recovery of value from disposal-process residues in the context of global material flows. A more technical strand of research has explored the recovery of high value materials from bulk residues (including biomass and steel slag). This paper draws on a study combining several of these approaches in highly novel research exploring scientific, engineering and social science considerations of the extraction of E-metals (primarily vanadium) from both legacy and current steel slag. The study aims to bring about new material flows, the policy implications of which are the focus of this paper. Specifically, we examine 1) the multi-scalar governance of material flows from residue, especially, historic, to economic activity and 2) the implications of this for theorisations of industrial symbiosis. We have conducted an extensive analysis of policy and industry documents at the UK, EU and international scales, guided by semi-structured interviews with key industry and regulatory representatives. The extraction of metals from slag has the potential to open up new sources of valuable metals, which could help stimulate a positive tipping point by changing attitudes to secondary materials; at least a negative resource security tip is delayed. However, there are implications for environmental protection, the economic value of residues, the legal definition of residues as waste or by-products, and could generate new relationships between companies on a potentially global scale.