M. Ormazabal1, F. García, C. Jaca1, J. Rincón-Moreno1 and M. J. Alvarez1
M. Ormazabal1, F. García, C. Jaca1, J. Rincón-Moreno1 and M. J. Alvarez1
1 Tecnun Universidad de Navarra. Manuel de Lardizabal,13 Donostia 20018. Spain
Keywords: Industrial Symbiosis, Circular Economy, Drivers, Barriers
1. Introduction
We currently live in a society where companies’ business models are based on extracting, manufacturing, using and wasting. However, these models are not sustainable over time, due to the fast rate of consumption. In response to this consumption model, the circular economy comes into play with the objective of ensuring that resources in general maintain their value at all times. In this sense, industrial symbiosis (IS) can help in the objectives of the circular economy by encouraging collaboration among companies. IS has been defined as engaging “traditionally separate industries in a collective approach to competitive advantage involving physical exchange of materials, energy, water, and by-products” [1]. Other collaborations, such as joint transport agreements, and shared machinery and facilities between different organizations, can also be considered IS. However, although there are some successful IS cases reported in the literature, it is also noted the fact that industrial symbiosis collaborations are still scarce and difficult to initiate. The main objective of this study is to analyze the factors that drive IS to boost them as well as the barriers in order to mitigate them.
2. Methodology
We carried out a literature review with the aim of studying the fostering factors of implementation of IS that the scientific community have identified. As a first step, we created the following four groups of keywords according to the objectives of the study: Sustainability, Industrial Symbiosis, Drivers or Barriers and Companies. From these groups of words, a query was designed for the Web of Science database and the search fields selected for the recovery of the scientific literature was the Topic (TS) for the period up to 2018. The obtained papers (1,656) were analyzed with the scientometric software called VOSviewer in order to obtain a two-dimensional map in which the words are organized according to their similarity [2]. Finally, a manually performed review was conducted for each of the papers, and only those that had a direct relationship with drivers or barriers in an industrial symbiosis context were selected. With the final list of results, made up of 40 articles, an analysis of the main drivers and barriers was carried out.
3. Results
The 1,655 obtained articles were analyzed with the VOS Viewer. The selected unit of analysis was “Author keywords” with a “Co-occurrence” [3]. In Figure 1, it can be observed that “sustainability” is the keyword with the most occurrences and with the most relationships, followed by “industrial symbiosis and industrial ecology”.
The literature review allowed us to identify the most significant drivers and barriers, which were classified into the following groups: new partnerships, in