Industrial Symbiosis

Industrial symbiosis is the exchange of materials, energy, or by-products between otherwise separate industrial processes, so that one facility's waste stream becomes another's feedstock. The concept was documented at scale in Kalundborg, Denmark, where a power station, refinery, pharmaceutical plant and plasterboard maker exchanged steam, gypsum and fly ash for decades before the term existed.

The EU's Circular Economy Action Plan treats this kind of cross-sector material exchange as core infrastructure for reducing landfill and virgin-material demand — but doing it for a specific waste stream requires knowing its composition, which receivers can legally and technically accept it, and what recovery route applies. That is the identification problem SymbioFlows solves.