Chapter 1 Food for thought: seeking the essence of Industrial Symbiosis 1 Pauline Deutz Abstract Researchers and practitioners would benefit from a definition of industrial symbiosis which clearly distinguishes essential from contingent characteristics. The definition also needs to be translatable between both language and policy contexts. Industrial symbiosis is herein defined as a flow of underutilised resource(s) (comprising substances and/or objects and/or energy), from an entity which would otherwise discard them, to another entity which uses them as a substitute for new resources. Choice of terms is justified by reference to academic and policy literature. This definition has an underlying assumption of resource efficiency, by contrast to other approaches which mistakenly emphasised economic benefits, which are contingent rather than essential characteristics. Keywords Industrial symbiosis · Industrial ecology · Policy · Resources · Waste 1.1 Introduction Industrial symbiosis (IS) is a field of study and environmental business practice within the interdisciplinary field of industrial ecology (IE). Core to the idea of IS is a collaborative approach to the extraction of value from otherwise underexploited resources. However, after two decades of debate, the definition of IS remains contested (Lombardi et al., 2012), even whilst authors develop theorisations (e.g., Paquin and Howard-Grenville, 2012). Without a clear understanding of what is IS, and the implications of that, efforts to build theories may be at cross purposes and possibly emphasize incidental rather than key characteristics. A clear understanding of underlying assumptions and their implications for methodology is critical to any research endeavour (Creswell, 2003). Clarity and consistency of definition are no less a concern for policy initiatives, which for IS are found across the globe (Lombardi et al., 2012). Assumptions underlying research relate to ontology and epistemology, which respectively ask questions about what exists and how we can gain knowledge of it 1 P. Deutz, Dept of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX; e-mail: p.deutz@hull.ac.uk Salomone R. Saija G. (Eds) Pathways to Environmental Sustainability: DOI 10.1007/978-3-319- 03826-1_1,© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014