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Industrial Ecology, although in concept has been latent in people's mind for many years, has evolved over the last 15 years. The September 1989 special issue of the Scientific American was on Managing Planet Earth. It featured an article, Strategies for Manufacturing, by Robert Frosch and Nicholas Gallopoulos, both then at General Motors. The authors proposed the concept of Industrial Ecosystems that functioned as an analogue of the Biological ecosystems (plants synthesize nutrients that feed herbivores, which in turn feed a chain of carnivores whose wastes and bodies eventually feed further generations of plants). The idea caught on and the concept has been growing rapidly. Today, Industrial Ecology is being pursued with unprecedented vigor. It is gaining recognition not only in business communities, but in academic and government circles as well. The Journal of Industrial Ecology (MIT Press) was launched in 1997, and the International Society for Industrial Ecology was founded in 2000.
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