Resource inventory for fostering industrial symbiosis practices

In this paper, we investigate the potential environmental benefits obtainable in Industrial Symbiotic Networks (ISNs) in case firms stock wastes when the demand is lower than supply. We design multiagent-based simulations to model the spontaneous emergence and operations of ISNs over time where firms are involved in substitution-based symbiotic relationships. In each simulation, we compute: 1) the amount of resources saved with respect to the amount of produced wastes; and 2) the amount of resources not saved because of the lack of inventory compared to the produced amounts. Results show that waste stocking could be a useful strategy to reduce the negative effects of the waste market dynamicity on the match between demand and supply