Industrial symbiosis is an efficient way for the energy and material-intensive facilities to spare resources as industrial companies work together to use the waste or by-products of one production process as the raw material for another.
For example, BASF uses the concept of Verbund – the intelligent interlinking of production plants, energy flows and infrastructure – to do this. Waste heat from one plant’s production process is used as energy in other plants.
BASF currently operates six Verbund sites worldwide: two in Europe, two in North America and two in Asia. The Verbund site in Ludwigshafen, Germany, is the world’s largest chemical complex owned by a single company that was developed as an integrated network.
Associated SDG targets
