Before understanding how industrial ecology is helping the ecosystem one must get clear about the concept of industrial ecology. Industrial ecology is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The industry can be seen as an intercorrelated series of processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities at humanity disposal. Industrial ecology wants to quantify these material flows and optimize the industrial processes in such a way to guarantee their environmental sustainability. Main topics are therefore how industrial activities impact on the environment in relation with planet’s supply of natural resources and waste disposal, and involve engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology and the natural sciences.

Under the concept of industrial ecology comes the concept of rural development and green technologies. What are green technologies? The technology in the industry which does not cause any harm to environment is known as green technology. Moreover bio degradable waste products come as outcome in the process of green technologies. A firm can apply the concept of industrial ecology in order to deal with the waste product of the company. Wastewater treatment is a major issue in every industry. Every firm must adopt techniques able to deal with this issue and the procedures must be quite economical too.

Industrial ecology makes the industry to look upon the technical system so that it does not cause any harm to the natural resources. Even excess usage of natural resources has to be diminished as we know that they are limited and they cannot be regenerated by the nature very easily. It takes quite a long time to nature to re-assimilate and regenerate to create the resources. So, measures have to be taken in order to save the ecosystem. Already the ecosystem of various zones has been destroyed. So, to avoid risks prompt measures should be taken so that the remaining portion of the resources do not get used up quickly and the nature has enough time to reform the resources.

The industrial ecology is one of the parts of the green technology. The main motto of the industrial ecology is to manage the waste. In most cases it has been witnessed that the major amount of ecological imbalance is caused by the pollution deriving from the industry waste products. In any industry waste product management has to be a big concern in order to maintain a healthy industrial ecology. Moreover industrial ecology is directly related to the economic system. It’s true that maintaining all the proper ecological processes may increase the production costs of the company, but in the long run this means saving the ecosystem and ultimately the human race. So, for the benefit of human civilization we must try and save the ecosystem from the man made hazards.

In all parts of the world industrial ecology is today a big buzz and made compulsory for every industry, whether it is big or small. The alternative is not pleasant for the human race: shortage of natural resources. Natural resources consumption may also be controlled by population control, as the demand increases along with the increase of the population number. In big industries, the authority is trying to keep an ecologist within the company staff, who can assist the firm to carry out the projects by following the green methodologies.