Minimisation of the Resource Demands and Environmental Footprints – the Need for Smart Symbiosis Networks

One of the ways of simultaneously minimising the use of fresh resources and pollution reduction are the industrial and urban symbiosis, implementing Circular Economy. The resource consumption and release of emissions can be considered as stemming from several domains – product use, production and delivery, resource supply, waste processing and reuse. In the present work, the Circular Economy issues are considered from a structural viewpoint, identifying the need to increase flexibility and the degrees of freedom. The analysis of the motivational example and the strategic issues in industrial and urban symbiosis has shown the need to construct Smart Symbiosis Networks for maximising the sustainability of cities and regions. Unlike previous studies related to circularity and Process Integration, the current analysis takes the holistic perspective and considers all three pillars of sustainability – economic (via cost and profit), environmental (via the footprints) and societal (by embedding health and safety into the analysis).