Sarah O'Carroll
GreenCape
Sarah O’Carroll joined GreenCape in 2013 as a Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis Programme (WISP) facilitator where she subsequently took over as programme manager in 2014. With the help of her team, Sarah is championing industrial symbioses as a key tool in developing a circular economy within the manufacturing sector of the Western Cape and beyond. Sarah was instrumental in the establishment of two other sub-national industrial symbiosis programmes in South Africa. Sarah's particular area of interest (outside managing WISP day-to-day) is market-led enterprise development in the green economy. Sarah is also GreenCape's representative at the Africa Circular Economy Network (ACEN). ACEN is an interest group of various experts looking at reinventing inclusive growth in Africa, using the concepts and principles of the Circular Economy.
The Western Cape Industrial Symbiosis Programme (WISP) is a sub-national facilitated industrial symbiosis programme, that has been operating since April 2013. The first three years of operations were focused on delivering business benefits to the members of the industrial symbiosis network. Economic, environmental and social benefits were tracked in order to provide an evidence base for industrial symbiosis in South Africa.
Overtime the ISP has also been expected to be a platform for enterprise development as resource exchanges (synergies) typically require some sort of processing (sorting, cleaning etc.) and transport for the synergies to be implemented, allowing the entry of a new third party.
In its fourth year of operation, WISP investigated the potential for enterprise development via industrial symbiosis by performing a detailed under-utilised resource analysis in Atlantis, one of the industrial areas in the City of Cape Town, the hub of industrial activity in the Western Cape province. WISP documented the outward flow of underutilised resources from 46 companies across a range of sectors, and synthesised that data into actual resource availability; identifying existing infrastructure and economic activities; and cataloging prospective developments earmarked for the industrial area that would enable greater resource efficiency. WISP documented 209 resources that are considered as waste or underutilised and another 208 resources are potential input materials or services. By analysing this data, five priority materials, food organics, wood organics, textiles, paper/cardboard and inorganics/minerals); and two priority services (logistics and expertise) were identified as viable enterprise development opportunities.
In an attempt to realise these enterprise development opportunities, WISP partnered with an Atlantis based business incubator to identify suitable entrepreneurs and then provide tailored support services to the entrepreneurs to establish enterprises based on the opportunities.
A similar analysis to the Atlantis study has since been conducted in Bellville Sacks Circle, another industrial area in the City of Cape Town with the aim of also identifying viable enterprise development opportunities.
This paper presents the key differentiating factors between the enterprise development opportunities identified in Atlantis and Bellville Sacks Circle, based on the types of industries located in the area, underutilised resources identified and key inputs and services required by the industries. The economic and landfill diversion potential of the opportunities identified are also compared. The success of the Atlantis enterprise development programme with the business incubator. The key learnings from the business incubator programme are then applied to the opportunities identified in Bellville Sacks Circle to estimate their potential success. Some reflections are also provided on the potential for industrial symbiosis as a mechanism for enterprise development, a key benefit that as yet has not received much attention in the academic literature.
• Industrial ecology in developing countries , • Industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial development , • Business and industry practices / case studies
