International Synergies : Our Projects

Why do SDD's matter to ISL?

The UK Government published its Sustainable Development Strategy in March 2005. Part of this strategy includes the implementation of a series of SDDs to help countries across the world address the challenges of sustainable development. The UK's own sustainable development ambitions depend on the actions of countries such as China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Brazil because they cannot be achieved globally without their cooperation.

SDDs allow ISL to demonstrate how industrial ecology can contribute towards sustainability by sharing best practice from its leading UK project, NISP. The Dialogues build on existing co-operation between countries, which fits perfectly with ISL's aims for global recognition and acceptance for its methodology and projects. ISL manages the SDDs on behalf of the not for profit company, Industrial Symbiosis Asia, a subsidiary of ISCo.

China
ISL has been commissioned to lead a SDD project in China to implement a circular economy pilot in Yunnan Province in a bid to help China develop long term resource efficiency and sustainable economic growth.

The project involves representatives from ISL making six visits or missions to China in the next 18 months to set up the pilot circular economy project. ISL is leading UK support to Chinese industry and will demonstrate that companies can work more effectively with one another through industrial symbiosis; the business led commercial trading of resources between different sectors of industry.

The China pilot programme is one in a series of new innovative partnerships that the UK is establishing with leading emerging powers. The UK's commitment to international sustainable development was emphasised in the UK's Sustainable Development Strategy, published in March 2005. The SDDs are one way in which the UK is working to improve follow-up of international commitments, recognising that no single nation can address the challenges of sustainable development alone.

ISL is sharing best practice based on UK experience with NISP and its success to date; helping to chart more sustainable pathways to growth and development through international collaboration.

In time, ISL will work directly with Chinese industry by influencing the upstream side of sustainable production and consumption and bringing together companies and organisations of all sectors and sizes. This activity generates cost reductions and new sales, as well as creating significant environmental benefits such as reduced greenhouse gases and landfill diversion. There exists tremendous opportunities in china at the moment and industrial symbiosis is the perfect vehicle for making them real.

Mexico
Representatives from ISL will also be visiting Mexico later this year to undertake an industrial symbiosis scoping study (funded by UKTI) to assess the country's industrial climate as part of its SDD