Using an Industrial Waste Account to Facilitate National Level Industrial Symbioses by Uncovering the Waste Exchange Potential

The identification of potential by-product exchanges is important for fostering industrial symbiosis. To discover these potential exchanges, this article extends the analysis of local industrial symbiosis to a national scale. A waste input-output table, which is a material flow accounting tool, was compiled and used as a database to examine the existing exchanges of by-products. The supplies and demands of industrial wastes or by-products were compared to highlight their potential use for promoting higher exchange flows. The analysis of the linkages indicated that the majority of each of the by-products were reused by the few industries that had the technology and operational capacity for reuse. This finding is useful for determining which industries are good candidates for promoting further industrial symbiosis (IS). Based on a nation-wide analysis that considered the industrial characteristics of Taiwan comprehensively, 23 types of major by-products with greater reuse flows and 216 potential exchange patterns were identified between the industries. In addition, three types of eco-industrial networks were characterized as follows according to their dominant types: (1) fossil fuel, metal, and mineral-dominated; (2) agricultural and synthetic material-dominated; and (3) information and communications technology (ICT) and chemical industry-dominated eco-industrial networks. This analysis highlights the resource exchange potentials and provides information to new firms for networking with existing businesses.