Industrial ecology: an emerging management science.

Pollution is a complex equation, compounded by population, rate of consumption, and toxic emissions per unit of resource consumed. This article defines industrial ecology as a management science that focuses a corporation's expertise on the third variable. Thus, industrial ecology is involved with changing the efficiency of machines, not just changing the law or a firm's compliance strategy. This article also explores how this emphasis allows a profoundly different orientation than the end-of-the-pipe regulatory approach of the last 20 yr.