Industrial Ecology as a Starting Point

According to Richards and Frosch [5], industrial ecology views environmental quality in terms of the interactions among and between units of production and consumption and their economic and natural environments, and it does so with a special focus on materials flows and energy use. They also go on to note that the integration of environmental factors can occur at three scales  

It is interesting to note that these three levels are identical to the levels at which natural systems are studied for their function. 

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