The ISIE awards committee is very pleased to announce that the 2021 Society Prize of the International Society of Industrial Ecology is awarded to Professor Shinichiro Nakamura of Waseda University in Tokyo for his outstanding contributions for advancing the science of industrial ecology as an interdisciplinary field of research.
Professor Nakamura has led the development and application of the waste input–output (WIO) approach. His unique contribution includes the development of the WIO framework, the compilation of databases, and their application to the evaluation of the environmental and economic aspects of waste management and resource recovery policies. His novel approach has made it possible, for the first time, to analyse the generation, treatment, and recycling of waste and by-products in an integrated economy-wide framework. In doing so he moved the focus from an end-of-life perspective of waste management to a whole of supply chain perspective encouraging sustainable materials management. This has innovated the way in which businesses and policy makers are conceptualizing materials management and has spearheaded circular economy thinking.
Professor Nakamura has also contributed to the development of material flow accounting and analysis as a tool for policy. He developed novel methodologies and was able to demonstrate their practical usefulness. Designing a dynamic MFA model enabled tracing the fate of materials across regions over time in open-loop recycling, with explicit consideration of the quality of recovered scrap and produced material in terms of their elemental composition. Applying this to metals has created a knowledge base for the promotion of urban mining and advanced recycling.
In addition to his scientific innovations Professor Nakamura has been a pioneer of industrial ecology education in Japan and globally. He established industrial ecology courses at the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University in 2011 which was one of the first industrial ecology courses in Japan. Using the opportunity of the European Union’s Erasmus Mundus Master’s Programme he contributed to the global reach of industrial ecology education. His devotion to the science and teaching of industrial ecology was also mired by his service to the scientific community as a conference chair and associated editor of the Journal of Industrial Ecology.
We congratulate Professor Nakamura to his achievements advancing industrial ecology and invite you to attend the Society Prize Lecture on 3 November 2021 offering an opportunity to celebrate the awardee and to jointly reflect on his scientific journey.
