Welcome to Indigo Development

Home | Indigo Publications | Indigo Services | Site Map | What's New

Eco-Industrial Parks | Industrial Ecology | Sustainable Agriculture

Integrative Regional Action Planning | Climate Adaptation | Sustainable Communities

Home

Welcome to Indigo Development, the first consulting company to apply industrial ecology to the challenges of local and regional sustainable development, beginning in 1993. In these pages you can learn about our services: applying industrial ecology (IE), planning eco-industrial parks (EIP), promoting sustainable communities, supporting sustainable agriculture, integrating regional action planning, and helping agencies and businesses prepare for the impacts of climate change.

The Indigo Development team works with clients committed to achieving major system changes in the world.

Can we respond at the level of the crisis?

The bad news seems worse than ever. At the same time, the good news often appears quite hopeful. Many of us shuttle between
hope and despair.

However, there is a clear space between hope and despair -- a space of intention, perseverance, and detachment.

Living and working in that space frees us to express the level of creativity our crisis demands.

Indigo Development creates systems solutions to meet this complex crisis through industrial ecology and integrative regional action planning:

We played a leading role in creating the eco-industrial park (EIP) concept, and have done strategic planning for EIP programs at sites in the US and overseas. Download our Eco-Industrial Park Handbook or order the Chinese language version.

The eco-industrial park is a central strategy in the Chinese Circular Economy initiative, to which we have contributed since its inception in 2002. Our paper on Walter Stahel's work on product-life extension and the Service or Functional economy is important for any country moving toward a more Circular Economy.

One of the most important topics for regional and national planning is preparation for the impacts of climate change. Indigo is now offering information and services to help agencies and businesses plan for climate adaptation has links to major documents in this field.
We believe industrial ecology is an ideal framework for designing an effective transition to sustainable agriculture.
We have adapted the EIP concept to provide a support system for a sustainable supply of food and fiber. Agro-eco-industrial parks (AEIP) support farmers in learning and practicing sustainable farming. (See AEIP page.)

In the last two years we have worked with partners in the Mantaray Team to evolve processes to conduct integrative regional action planning.

Indigo Development is in the business of creating powerful solutions. We do this by linking strength of vision to pragmatic understanding of conditions on the ground, wherever we work. Industrial ecology and systems practice are our foundation.

Briefly, industrial ecology is an interdisciplinary framework for designing and operating industrial and other human systems as living systems that are interdependent with natural systems. We view public and private services, urban design, and agriculture as fields that can benefit from IE. Industrial ecology's primary goal is to balance environmental and economic interests within emerging understanding of local and global ecological constraints. To achieve this goal industrial ecologists must also coordinate with the social dimension of sustainable development.

Industrial Facilities in Dalian Development Zone, China