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Industrial ecology has been defined as "the study of the flows of materials and energy in industrial and consumer activities, of the flows on the environment, and of the influences of economic, political, regulatory, and social factors of the flow, use, and transformation of resources." The 2001 inaugural meeting of the International Society for Industrial Ecology exposed the slow path to legitimacy experienced by this new field of technology development and management over the previous 10 years. Analogies have been drawn to show the connections between current industrial economies and evolving ecosystems. There are those who argue that ecosystems are far too complex to offer a useful blueprint to predict the behavior of business activities and natural evolutionary forces implicit in ecosystems do not offer the moral direction required for a just society. …