Sustainability Atlas
Circular Economy·14 min read··...

Interview: the builder's playbook for Industrial symbiosis & waste-to-value — hard-earned lessons

A practitioner conversation: what surprised them, what failed, and what they'd do differently. Focus on unit economics, adoption blockers, and what decision-makers should watch next.

The global circular economy market reached $656 billion in 2024 and is projected to surge to $2.7 trillion by 2035, growing at a 13.6% CAGR—yet only 7.2% of materials are currently recycled globally, down from 9.1% six years ago. This paradox defines the industrial symbiosis opportunity: the market is exploding while execution remains stubbornly difficult. We spoke with practitioners across Asia-Pacific who are building waste-to-value networks at scale—from China's zero-carbon industrial parks to Vietnam's $30 billion eco-industrial zones—to understand what separates successful deployments from expensive failures.

Industrial symbiosis, where one company's waste becomes another's feedstock, sounds elegant in theory. In practice, it requires coordinating material flows across competing organisations, navigating fragmented regulations, and building trust among partners who may never have shared proprietary data before. The Kalundborg Symbiosis in Denmark—the world's oldest industrial symbiosis network—saves €24-28 million annually and avoids 635,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. But it took 60 years to reach 20 partners with 20+ active waste streams. Product and design teams in Asia-Pacific don't have six decades. Here's what practitioners have learned about compressing that timeline.

Why It Matters

Industrial waste represents one of the largest untapped value pools in the circular economy. The industrial waste management market reached $1.65 trillion in 2024 and is growing at 7.5% CAGR, with the industrial segment accounting for 85.8% of total waste management volume. For Asia-Pacific specifically, the region attracts 45% of global clean energy investment ($729.4 billion in 2023) and accounts for 50% of global electricity consumption—creating both massive waste streams and unprecedented opportunities for waste-to-value innovation.

China's Central Economic Work Conference in December 2024 designated zero-carbon industrial parks as a national priority for 2025, with the Liyang Zero-Carbon Industrial Park in Jiangsu Province already demonstrating what's possible: 100 hectares featuring 77,000 square metres of PV panels generating 5.2 million kWh annually, integrated with wind and hydro power. The city targets 10+ near-zero-carbon parks and 15+ near-zero-carbon factories by 2026.

For product and design teams, the implications are strategic. Scope 3 emissions now face mandatory disclosure requirements across major markets, and 78% of institutional investors evaluate circular economy metrics in portfolio decisions. Companies implementing circular strategies see a 23% average profit margin increase within three years. But capturing this value requires understanding both the unit economics that make symbiotic exchanges viable and the adoption blockers that cause most initiatives to stall.

Key Concepts

Industrial symbiosis operates through three interconnected layers that product teams must design for simultaneously:

Material Exchanges: Physical waste streams—gypsum, fly ash, biomass, sludge, wastewater—flow between facilities. At Kalundborg, pharmaceutical sludge becomes farm fertiliser, power plant gypsum feeds Gyproc wallboard production, and 170,000 tonnes of virgin gypsum extraction is avoided annually. The constraint is quality standardisation: complex composition and contamination risks limit which waste streams can substitute for virgin inputs.

Energy Cascades: Waste heat and steam from high-temperature processes power lower-temperature operations. Kalundborg's network delivers waste heat to 3,500+ homes and provides 700,000 cubic metres per year of cooling water from Equinor to Asnæs Power Station. The economics work when transport distances remain short—logistics represent approximately 60% of costs in circular economy operations.

Information Architecture: Digital platforms increasingly mediate symbiotic relationships. Matchmaking tools identify potential exchanges, real-time monitoring tracks material flows, and traceability systems verify provenance for LCA reporting. Vietnam's Hai Phong eco-industrial parks are integrating digital transformation with green transition, though challenges remain around wastewater reuse and hazardous waste transfer stations.

The unit economics follow a predictable pattern. Infrastructure investment at Kalundborg totals approximately $78.5 million, generating $24-28 million in annual business cost savings and $15.6 million in annual socioeconomic value. Payback periods for individual exchange projects range from 3-7 years. Per-partner benefits average €1.2-1.4 million annually in cost savings, 30,000+ tonnes CO₂ reduction, and 150,000-200,000 cubic metres water savings.

What's Working

China's Zero-Carbon Industrial Park Acceleration

China's aggressive policy push is generating the fastest deployment of industrial symbiosis infrastructure globally. The Boao Zero-Carbon Demonstration Zone in Hainan Province, featuring the BFA International Conference Center with extensive rooftop PV systems, became operational in March 2025. National Demonstration Eco-Industrial Parks (NDEIPs) show significant positive impact on local economic development through green innovation, human capital development, and firm attractiveness—with effects varying by park lifecycle phase and industry concentration.

The policy architecture matters: Beijing Daxing District, Shanghai Minhang District, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Fujian provinces all included zero-carbon park construction in 2025 government work reports. This creates guaranteed demand and regulatory certainty that de-risks infrastructure investment.

Vietnam's FDI-Driven Eco-Industrial Zones

Vietnam's Hai Phong region attracted $4.35 billion in foreign investment in 2024 alone—242% of target—across 1,000+ FDI projects with cumulative capital exceeding $30 billion since 2015. The Deep C Industrial Zones are pioneering EIP models with efficient logistics and modern infrastructure. The region achieved 11% GRDP growth in 2024, marking its tenth consecutive year of double-digit growth.

The success factors include proximity to port infrastructure, strong government facilitation, and the ability to offer integrated renewable energy access. Nearly all Southeast Asian countries are now developing eco-industrial parks with shared renewable energy access and optimised supply chains for decarbonisation.

Washington State's Industrial Symbiosis Grant Program

The most replicable model for product teams comes from Washington State's FY 2025 Industrial Symbiosis Grants Program. The state awarded $3.25 million to 11 projects, which with required 1:1 matching funds represents $6.5 million total investment. Individual grants range from $40,000 to $500,000, targeting specific adoption blockers.

Notable awardees include Angmartek ($231,693 for regional waste data and communication platform in King County), Biomethane ($153,750 for organics separation to renewable natural gas in Spokane County), and Center for Sustainable Infrastructure ($323,755 for multi-county facilitation across four counties). The program demonstrates how targeted public funding can catalyse private sector coordination.

What's Not Working

Trust and Information Asymmetries

Research identifies 18+ distinct barriers across economic, technical, legal, and social dimensions—but practitioners consistently name trust as the most intractable. Companies are reluctant to share detailed waste stream data with potential partners who may also be competitors. The "short mental distance" that enables Kalundborg's success—regular forums for information exchange, personal relationships between decision-makers—requires years to develop.

Digital matchmaking platforms are emerging as partial solutions. Frontiers in Chemical Engineering published research in 2024 on tools for identification, quantification, and optimisation of symbiotic potential. But technology cannot substitute for the institutional trust-building that enables companies to expose their waste streams to external analysis.

Regulatory Fragmentation

Conflicting municipal regulations create immediate friction: waste permitted for transfer in the origin municipality may be prohibited in the destination. The absence of harmonised national waste management policies in many Asian markets forces project-by-project regulatory navigation. Materials classified as "waste" face restrictions that materials classified as "by-products" or "co-products" do not—creating incentives for definitional arbitrage rather than genuine circularity.

The European Union's upcoming Digital Product Passport requirements (2026) may establish templates for standardised material documentation, but Asia-Pacific lacks equivalent regional coordination. Product teams must design for regulatory heterogeneity rather than assuming harmonisation will emerge.

Virgin Material Price Competition

When oil prices are low, virgin plastics undercut recycled alternatives. Chemical recycling costs can reach 3× that of virgin materials. This creates a structural challenge: symbiotic exchanges must remain economically viable through commodity price cycles, or they collapse when market conditions shift unfavourably.

Kalundborg's exchanges evolved over decades, with unsuccessful ones naturally terminating when economics deteriorated. But product teams operating on 3-5 year planning horizons cannot afford this selection process. They need exchanges that are robust to price volatility from day one.

Infrastructure Gaps in Emerging Markets

Vietnam's Hai Phong eco-industrial parks face concrete infrastructure deficits: lack of solid waste and hazardous waste transfer stations, inadequate facilities for processing by-products, and limited wastewater reuse capacity. These gaps are even more pronounced in developing economies where widespread landfilling remains the default and systemic integration remains limited.

The challenge is chicken-and-egg: infrastructure investment requires guaranteed throughput, but throughput requires infrastructure. Public-private partnerships and blended finance structures are emerging solutions, but deal structuring remains complex.

Key Players

Established Leaders

  • Kalundborg Symbiosis (Denmark) — The world's oldest and most studied industrial symbiosis network. 20 partners including Novo Nordisk, Novozymes, Equinor, and Ørsted exchange 20+ resource streams, saving €24-28 million annually and avoiding 635,000 tonnes CO₂ emissions.

  • SUEZ Group (France) — Global waste management and circular economy leader. Launched 5-year circular partnership with CNRS in April 2025 and operates across Asia-Pacific markets.

  • Veolia Environnement (France) — Adding 530,000 tonnes hazardous waste capacity by 2030. Leads industrial waste management and resource recovery across 45 countries.

  • Deep C Industrial Zones (Vietnam) — Hai Phong-based eco-industrial developer attracting $30+ billion cumulative FDI, pioneering Southeast Asian EIP models.

Emerging Startups

  • Recycleye (UK) — AI-powered waste classification for recycling centres. Uses computer vision to improve sorting accuracy and material recovery rates.

  • Circularise (Netherlands) — Blockchain-based traceability for plastic supply chains. Enables verified material provenance for LCA and compliance reporting.

  • Greyparrot (UK) — Computer vision and deep learning for waste characterisation. Provides real-time analytics on waste composition and contamination.

  • Scrapbee (Germany) — Digital platform for industrial scrap trading. Raised €4.7 million in 2023 from Project A, Partech, and Market One Capital.

  • MOLG — AI-powered matching for circular manufacturing. Identifies potential symbiotic exchanges across industrial networks.

Key Investors & Funders

  • EIT InnoEnergy — Europe's leading sustainable energy investor with 70+ deals spanning early to late-stage and grants.

  • European Commission/EU Innovation Fund — Top investor by deal count (~400 grants) in circular economy infrastructure.

  • Asian Development Bank — Finances eco-industrial park development across Asia-Pacific, including waste-to-energy projects.

  • DBS Bank (Singapore) — 10 deals in 2024 across grants, debt, VC, and post-IPO structures for circular economy ventures.

  • Washington State Commerce Department — $3.25 million Industrial Symbiosis Grants Program with 1:1 matching requirements, funding 11 projects in FY 2025.

Action Checklist

  1. Map your waste streams with economic granularity: Quantify not just tonnage but composition, contamination levels, seasonal variation, and current disposal costs. The difference between "we generate organic waste" and "we generate 2,400 tonnes/year of food-grade organic waste with <5% contamination, peaking at 300 tonnes/month in Q4" determines whether you can find symbiotic partners.

  2. Identify anchor tenants before designing exchanges: Successful industrial symbiosis requires at least one large, stable partner whose waste or feedstock needs can anchor the network. In Kalundborg, Equinor's refinery and Asnæs Power Station provided the foundational exchanges that attracted subsequent partners.

  3. Design for regulatory portability: Document material flows using emerging standards (EU Digital Product Passport frameworks, ISO 14001 environmental management systems) even if not yet required in your jurisdiction. Regulatory convergence is accelerating, and documentation today reduces compliance costs tomorrow.

  4. Build trust infrastructure before technical infrastructure: Invest in regular partner forums, transparent data-sharing agreements, and relationship management before investing in physical pipelines. Kalundborg's success stems from "short mental distance" between decision-makers—something technology cannot substitute.

  5. Model economics across commodity price cycles: Test your exchange economics against 2019 oil prices, 2022 peaks, and 2024 troughs. Exchanges that only work at one price point will collapse when markets shift.

  6. Engage policy facilitators early: Connect with programs like Washington State's Industrial Symbiosis Grants or equivalent regional initiatives. Public funding can de-risk first-of-kind exchanges and provide technical assistance for partner identification.

  7. Start with energy before materials: Waste heat and steam exchanges typically face fewer contamination and quality standardisation challenges than material flows. Successful energy cascades build the trust and operational experience needed for more complex material symbiosis.

  8. Design traceability into product systems: As Scope 3 disclosure requirements tighten, products incorporating verified recycled content will command premiums. Integrate blockchain or equivalent traceability from initial design rather than retrofitting for compliance.

FAQ

Q: What's the realistic payback period for industrial symbiosis infrastructure investment? A: Individual exchange projects at Kalundborg show 3-7 year payback periods, with the entire network generating cumulative historical savings of approximately $310 million against $78.5 million in infrastructure investment—roughly 4:1 returns. However, these figures reflect a 60-year optimisation process. New networks should expect longer paybacks initially (5-10 years for first exchanges) with improving returns as the network matures and additional symbiotic opportunities emerge. The key is designing initial investments to enable future exchanges, not just first-year savings.

Q: How do we overcome the trust barrier when potential partners are also competitors? A: Successful networks use three mechanisms: neutral facilitators (government agencies, industry associations, or independent brokers) who hold confidential data and identify matches without exposing proprietary information; staged disclosure that starts with aggregated sector-level data before revealing company-specific details; and binding contracts with clear liability and IP provisions before any waste stream data is shared. Washington State's grant program funds facilitators specifically because individual companies cannot perform this coordination role credibly.

Q: What regulatory changes should Asia-Pacific product teams monitor for 2025-2026? A: Three developments warrant close attention. First, China's national push for zero-carbon industrial parks will likely generate provincial and municipal policies requiring participation in symbiotic networks for new industrial facilities. Second, the EU Digital Product Passport requirements (2026) will establish templates for material traceability that may become de facto global standards—Asian exporters to Europe will need compatible systems. Third, APEC circular economy industrial park frameworks are promoting standardised approaches across the region; monitor proceedings from the 18th Industrial Symbiosis Research Symposium (Singapore, June 2025) for emerging consensus.

Q: How do we prioritise which waste streams to target first? A: Apply three filters sequentially. First, volume and consistency: streams must be large enough and stable enough to justify infrastructure investment. Second, quality and contamination: streams that can substitute directly for virgin inputs without extensive processing offer the fastest path to value. Third, existing disposal costs: streams with high current disposal fees (hazardous waste, regulated organics) create immediate savings that fund more complex exchanges. At Kalundborg, gypsum from power plant scrubbers to Gyproc wallboard worked because the stream was large, consistent, high-quality, and the alternative (landfilling) was expensive.

Q: What digital tools should we evaluate for symbiosis matchmaking and traceability? A: For matchmaking, evaluate platforms that can handle material characterisation (composition, contamination, volume variability), geographic matching (proximity is critical for logistics costs), and regulatory compliance checking (permitted in both origin and destination jurisdictions). Circularise offers blockchain-based plastic supply chain traceability; Recycleye and Greyparrot provide AI-powered waste characterisation. For enterprise deployment, look for integration with existing ERP systems and compatibility with emerging Digital Product Passport standards. The key selection criterion is whether the tool reduces transaction costs enough to enable exchanges that would otherwise be too coordination-intensive to pursue.

Sources

The industrial symbiosis opportunity is real—$656 billion in 2024, growing to $2.7 trillion by 2035—but capturing it requires patient capital, trust-building infrastructure, and policy engagement that most product teams underestimate. The practitioners we spoke with were unanimous: the technical challenges of waste-to-value conversion are solvable, but the coordination challenges of multi-party symbiotic networks remain the binding constraint. Asia-Pacific's combination of policy momentum, infrastructure investment, and manufacturing density creates a unique window for teams willing to invest in the institutional architecture that makes material flows possible. The question is not whether industrial symbiosis will scale, but who will build the networks that capture the value when it does.

Topics

industrialsymbiosistraceabilityScope 3LCAcompliancesorting

Related Articles