Independent work theme: Ecological problems student: Narzillo Abdulloyev ecology

WORKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT – INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

A while ago, I was reading an article on pollution prevention written by an ex-EPA consultant, and wasboth amused and somewhat surprised to see "industrial ecology" identified as industry green wash. My first response, of course, was dismissive: didn’t the author realize that meaningful environmental pro-gress could be achieved only through such systematic approaches as industrial ecology, and its implementation through (for example) Design for Environment and Life Cycle Assessment methodologies?

Indeed, pollution prevention as usually interpreted by environmental regulators is a singularly limited concept, a relatively insignificant extension of end-of-pipe approaches, and it requires something like industrialecology to energize it.

But my initial reaction was both unfair and superficial. The author was not really reacting to industrial ecology as laid out in existing texts or as being implemented in some firms today. Rather, the article implicitly made an important point about the nature of "environment" itself: the very concept (and closely related con-cepts such as "wilderness" and "nature") is constructed from underlying mental models, which may differ