Digital Platforms for Industrial Symbiosis

Industrial symbiosis contributes to the realisation of a circular economy where
underutilised assets are shared among different companies and the residual
outputs from one industry are used as feedstock for the production processes
of other industries. While digital platforms have the potential to facilitate
the exchange of excess resources in industrial symbiosis networks, existing
platforms have not been very successful hitherto. This research empirically
investigates the barriers to industrial symbiosis and how digital platforms (fail
to) address them. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted
with eleven prospective platform providers based in Norwegian industrial
parks, and two platform developers and one provider in the Netherlands.
Results show that the uptake of platform-enabled industrial symbiosis is still
hampered by limited commitment to sustainability, a lack of cooperation and
information sharing, as well as technical and economic barriers. Platform
design only partially solves the challenges specific to matchmaking platforms
that facilitate the identification and exploitation of synergy opportunities