The Québec Industrial Waste Exchange Program (BRIQ, www.briq.ca) was launched by the CTTÉI to meet the offers and demands for waste of Québec businesses. Enhancements to increase its user-friendliness and performance have made the BRIQ a tool to determine potential synergies between businesses in a given area. The program also makes it possible to create profiles of new businesses whose activities could be complementary to the ones already being carried out on the territory.
These advances and the development of a rigorous methodology have led the CTTÉI to carry out its first by-product synergy project in the Bécancour industrial park and port with the support of several local and government partners. The project involved 12 Centre-du-Québec businesses and identified almost 40 synergies, which, once applied, will represent earnings of $1.6M and savings of at least 2,000 teqCO2/year for participating businesses.
A by-product synergies project generates several environmental and social benefits for the businesses involved and the community:
- New business networks;
- Local waste management and limited transport costs;
- New income by reselling materials or avoiding certain elimination costs;
- Preferred rates for eliminating materials in bulk and group rates from service providers (economies of scale);
- Lower purchase costs of new materials for businesses that integrate industrial waste into their production processes;
- Increased competition among businesses through process optimization;
- Enhanced corporate images through environmental impact reduction;
- Increased appeal of the industrial zone or territory;
- New business dynamic;
- Profiles of the companies to attract so as to ensure their activities are complementary to those of the businesses already present on the territory;
- More diverse industrial activities;
- A new culture of collective resource management (water, energy, materials);
- Companies become accountable in their steps towards sustainability.
These synergies create industrial symbiosis – the exchange of the water, energy and/or materials (i.e. production waste) used for industrial activities. The concept is still new and only a small number of industrial ecology projects have been developed around the world.
