Business models for industrial symbiosis: a guide for firms

Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a collaborative approach concerning physical exchange of materials, energy, and services among different firms: accordingly, wastes produced by a given firm are exploited as inputs by other firms. This approach is able to generate economic and environmental benefits at the same time, the former for the involved firms and the latter for the collectivity as a whole. For these reasons, the implementation of IS is largely recommended. However, despite its huge potentialities, the IS approach seems to be actually underdeveloped and not fully exploited. Firms without any prior experience of IS exchanges suffer from lack of awareness about how to integrate the IS practice into their current business models and how to gain economic benefits from IS. Since the willingness to obtain economic benefits is the main driver pushing firms to implement the IS practice, this issue constitutes an important barrier to the development of new IS relationships. In this paper, we contribute to this issue by identifying the different business models that each firm can adopt to implement the IS approach. In particular, we identify several business models for both firms producing waste and firms requiring waste. For each model, we highlight how firms can create and get economic value from IS. Moreover, from the interaction among firms, each of them implementing its own business model, several business scenarios at inter-firm level can arise. These scenarios are also presented: for each of them, strengths and weaknesses are identified and a short case study is discussed. The identified models can be useful at the company level since they provide indications about how to integrate the IS approach within their current business model.