Technical efficiency measures of industrial symbiosis networks using enterprise input-output analysis

An important challenge that firms should be able to tackle regards the mitigation of the environmental impact of their production processes avoiding additional costs. Using industrial symbiosis (IS), two different firms can obtain mutual environmental and economic benefits, at the same time, exchanging wastes for primary inputs. Industrial symbiosis networks (ISNs), i.e. networks of production processes exchanging wastes among them, are thus emerging and efficiency measures are needed to be defined and investigated, in order to drive the ISN design and development. In this paper, we develop the concept of technical exchange efficiency of ISNs and develop a measure of such an efficiency. This measure is computed by using an input-output approach at the enterprise level, modelling symbiotic flows within ISNs. A case example is discussed in order to show the practical applications of technical exchange efficiency of ISNs. In particular, technical exchange efficiency of ISNs can be useful in order to drive the development of existing ISNs and to design new industrial systems exploiting the IS approach.