Material and energy flows in corporate environmental management

SUMMARY

Material and energy flows within and between the societal systems and the natural ecosystem result in the depletion of natural resources and threaten the capacity of nature to assimilate wastes and emissions. In this paper, the aim is to compare the material and energy flows of nature to these same flows in an industrial system. The ecosystem material and energy flows are divided into four categories: matter (biomass), nutrients, energy and carbon. For directing the flows in industrial systems toward the operational model of an ecosystem, interrelated goals within each category are presented.

Keywords:

• material and energy flows
• industrial system
• ecosystem
• matter
• nutrients
• energy
• carbon