Symbiotic exchanges and hazardous wastes in Chemical Industry. A “Path-Dependent” Case Study

The Eco-Industrial approach promotes the transition from traditional industrial clusters to Eco-Industrial Parks (EIP) [1-2], exploiting geographical proximity, existing synergies and peculiar socio-economic relation with the territory. This paper presents an hypothesis of symbiotic exchanges to redevelop a chemical industrial site located in Abruzzo Region: Bussi chemical site (BCS). It is one of the oldest Italian cluster and it involves five production units for a total of 220 employees. The sectors of activity are: basic chemicals, pesticides, micronized silica, production and distribution of electricity. This cluster reveals great opportunities in the re-use of by-products among two production chains: the reuse of the unreacted sand in the silicate sector and the sulfuric acid recovery for the detergency sector. The possible scenarios that could be implemented are: i) the exploitation of symbiotic internal exchanges; ii) the location of new industrial plant in the chemical site - this activity concerns the recovery of precious metals (as cobalt, vanadium, nickel, molybdenum) from used catalysts deriving from chemical and petrochemical industry; iii) the involvement of another regional cluster (Automotive industry) - in this case the exchanges could include: extraction of metals from electroplating sludges and used catalysts; exchange of product and by-products deriving from BCS, used as raw materials in the Automotive industry. Preliminary results demonstrate great opportunities to improve economic and environmental performances of the cluster. An important reflection concerns the social acceptance that could represent a crucial limit in the transition process. Local community demonstrated a strong opposition to any proposal of redevelopment of the site related to the treatment of waste or by-products and to the establishment of new companies involved in these activities. This is due to the fact that, in the past, Bussi chemical site was protagonist of an environmental scandal for the presence of an illegal dump of toxic materials. The re-industrialization of the site following the EIP model met a distrust of local population used to conceive the production cycle as a linear cycle. Revolutionize this system, introducing a closed loop model, highlights the difficulty in conceiving wastes as a resource, not any more as cost to the company [3].