Hardwick Area Eco-Industrial Park

In an Eco-Industrial Park (EIP), businesses cooperate with each other and with the local community in an attempt to reduce waste and pollution, efficiently share resources (such as information, materials, water, energy, infrastructure and natural resources), and increase economic gains and improve environmental quality to help achieve sustainable development. The Center’s project will go a step further and create an EIP solely for agriculture-based businesses. The Center will use the basic strategies of eco-industrial parks regarding site selection and development, building standards, and other related factors, but will build on the opportunity for profitable by-product flows between tenants that is particularly high with the biomass, energy, and water intensive companies in food processing.

The concept of an Eco-Industrial Park is fairly new and there are very few examples worldwide of businesses cooperating in this way. There are even fewer examples of an EIP’s focus on agricultural enterprises. The conventional model for the creation of an industrial park is to bring jobs into the area, regardless of the type of jobs. They are usually initiated and owned by a region’s local economic development group. In an EIP, on the other hand, it is important that the businesses work well together – as different parts of an ecosystem work together. In addition, to take advantage of as many overlapping needs and synergies as possible, it will be valuable to focus the development of the park in a conscientious, intentional and purposeful way. These two facts as well as others make it important that this EIP is developed by the businesses, for the businesses, rather than for an outside agency.