The world continues to develop on all fronts, and these changes can be seen physically in the rapid urbanization of more cities and rising infrastructure. Central to this, industrial parks have stood as the pillars that support the modern conveniences that enhance everyday life from the expansion of commerce to the efficiency of large-scale corporate management.
Technological innovations have been a prime catalyst to ushering another industrial revolution, but it seems that this has also accelerated consumption of natural resources and the increase of humanity’s carbon footprint. It is because of this that private and government sectors have begun their net-zero carbon initiatives in the hopes of triggering a paradigm shift towards sustainable development.
The question however is whether this is possible considering how much of resource consumption, carbon emissions, and overall pollution are concentrated in the most urbanized cities.
Why Industrial Parks?
In urban areas, industrial parks are usually sections of the city set apart from commercial and residential areas solely for industrial activity. These parks are dense with production-centric facilities such as warehouses, factories, sortation and distribution centers, transportation ports, and in some cases, even oil refineries.
Commercial development can contribute the largest parts of pollution and waste in a country. For example, the World Bank reports in 2020 that up to 70% of all of China’s pollution and greenhouse gases come from factories and manufacturing facilities alone. This isn’t even accounting for the toxic waste that is released into bodies of water in the case of other countries in Southeast Asia.
Despite all this, there lies a golden opportunity for reducing greenhouse emissions on a grand scale through a revitalized approach to industrial parks. The goal in this case is for industrial activities to transition towards sustainable, eco-friendly operations to a degree equivalent to their carbon footprint, hence the term net-zero carbon.
How It’s Done
The direction of technological innovation has been towards improving the lives of people, so it only makes sense that technology is also the key to achieving eco-friendly industrial parks. Such innovation has been called digital infrastructure, often used by companies today for more effective urban management.
It assists them in optimizing operations and addressing weaknesses on a larger scale while automating some of the analytical processes that would otherwise take longer for another employee to do. This is especially helpful when they have to manage different segments of a business from manufacturing, storage, and distribution among other things, all at the same time.
The idea is to integrate artificial intelligence and a network of devices through digital infrastructure in order that power and resources are tracked for ecological pain points. Similar to urban management, these industrial parks will be optimized instead towards eco-friendliness and resource sustainability without hampering company operations as much as possible.
Reaching the Goal: Eco-Industrial Parks
To guide the transitioning of industrial parks around the world, global organizations such as the World Bank, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GmbH), and the United Nations Development Organization have published a framework with objectives and indicators for the sustainability of these new Eco-Industrial Parks.
The framework hopes to balance corporate development and eco-friendly operations without compromising on either of the two on four main points—park management, environmental impact, social responsibility, and economic performance. These serve as international criteria for industries around the world to make a tangible impact on each country’s carbon footprint.
Several countries in Europe and Southeast Asia have been quick to follow suit to this framework. South Korea has invested in restructuring their parks to improve waste management and energy efficiency, all of which have resulted in reduced carbon emissions and oil consumption by hundreds of thousands of tons.
Some companies in China have also begun mandating their industrial parks to build waste management infrastructure while implementing projects to provide clean, guilt-free electricity to cities. Similarly, local leaders in Britain have initiated partnerships with business associations who can produce programs and digital solutions to reducing the carbon footprint of their national industries.
Moving Forward
Of course, the framework is not a strict mandate as much as it is a set of guidelines for different countries to address their industrial parks’ waste and emissions based on their own context. While most nations have worked towards similar results, they’ve done so in varying initiatives in partnership between leaders and business sectors.
It’s interesting to note that most countries who have begun their net-zero shifts have been developed countries who are past their industrial phases. In other parts of the world, there may still be barriers to meeting the international framework, especially because it does not prescribe a process on how to do so.
Perhaps the idea is for business sectors and companies around the world to have an eco-friendly mindset from the get-go rather than small industrial developments alone when building and managing their infrastructure.
