During the last decades economic development clearly showed increasing relevance of environmental issues. At the beginning these problems have been tackled by introducing new technical measures such as flue gas cleaning and were soon extended to methodically integrated attempts like cleaner production, pollution prevention, environmental management etc. Such local und punctual attempts did not appear to be sufficient as the causes are often of fundamental nature.
It turned out to be necessary to merge all efforts on reducing environmental impact at a higher level, on regional or national level. These efforts are summarized in the idea of "Industrial Ecology" and "Sustainability".
The central tasks of the Industrial Ecology include measurement of environmental pollution, assessment of the environmental performance of products and production lines as well as the evaluation of measures and funding programmes. In these fields we work with process modelling with scenario techniques, material and energy flow analysis, life cycle analysis and different ways of sustainability assessment.
The field of activities was not institutionalized in Austria for a long time. The Institute for Industrial Ecology was founded in 1998 as a non-profit, scientific association through the take over of the Research Institute of Chemistry and Environment (FICU), which was situated since 1994 at the Technical University of Vienna. In doing so the Institute for Industrial Ecology could build its function on the extensive preparatory work of FICU.
The complexity of that matter requires a multidisciplinary approach, so that an implementation at university seems difficult as there the main target lies in immersing the single scientific disciplines.
Sponsorship through Industry and public entities on the one hand and the location at the Lower Austrian State Academy on the other hand form a perfect basis for the required multidisciplinarity.
The main focus of scientific work is the creation of a framework for a sustainable economy under technical, environmental and economic aspects. To reach that goal work is carried out in interdisciplinary cooperation between the mentioned disciplines, as well as in the context of international working groups and committees.
In recent years, the Institute significantly contributed to environmental topics in Austria.
In accordance to the requirements of industrial ecology scientific fundamentals and applied themes are dealt with in a balanced combination. The projects are commissioned mainly by public institutions like Austrian ministries and economic associations as well as scientific funds financed by the EU.
The main concern in all our work is to act as a go between among economy and offical institution, so that by gathering objective basis for decision-making contributes to an agreement over current themes and future strategies. Therefore a close connection between scientific background and application-oriented challenges might be the best security/guarantee for lasting independence and persistent acknowledgement for the institute.