About the research

In 2011, the EPSRC announced a £5.2m investment in Industrial Sustainability Research with a vision to explore how industry might “double output while only using 50% of current resources and generating 20% of current CO2”, representing a new industrial revolution termed Industrial Sustainability¹. This demonstrates the importance placed on research in addressing the Grand Challenges set out in the Industrial Strategy.

Understanding broader strengths and weaknesses in the academic field can direct research investment to areas most needed by policymakers. This study offers the first systematic review of industrial sustainability research from 1992 to 2014. 574 articles were reviewed from 62 peer-reviewed journals, providing the first opportunity to assess the realisation of these possibilities.

Key findings

• Three substantive conversations in industrial sustainability focus on “productivity and innovation”, “corporate citizenship” and “economic resilience”.
• Research has been dominated by a focus on efficiency strategies that minimise negative impacts on industry, offering improvements to firm-level operations and production activities, and aiming to incrementally reduce negative impacts of industrial activity on society.
• 69% of the sample examines product (re)design, material/resource utilisation and optimisation strategies, and rethinking what is meant by value creation. This has led to several widely adopted innovations in these areas such as reducing harm, abatement, end of pipe solutions and doing more with less.
• Innovations have included revaluating energy consumption, substitution of material with high toxicity/carbon emissions and recouping materials from production waste streams for re-use.
• 21% of the sample focuses on wider business-in-society issues at organisational or extended enterprise levels, encompassing the business case and ideological issues of corporate citizenship.
• Only 10% focuses on the transformative potential of such ideas at an institutional level, focusing on the notions of natural capitalism and sustainable industrial systems.
• The strong focus on operational excellence will need to be followed by wider institutional system-level change that privileges on scaling-up and transition.