BOARDMAN — Resource sharing between companies in Eastern Oregon has been given a name — industrial symbiosis — in hopes organizations can more effectively and intentionally share excess and limit waste.

Industrial symbiosis happens when businesses and industries collaborate to use each other’s byproducts, resources and expertise to the mutual benefit of the groups involved.

Representatives from agriculture and other industries based in Eastern Oregon met at the SAGE Center in Boardman Wednesday, Jan. 15, for a lunch and learn session to hear from Kalundborg Symbiosis, a Danish company leading industrial symbiosis efforts. The Center for Sustainable Infrastructure, with the support of Business Oregon, hosted the event.

Per Moller, a senior special advisor at Kalundborg Symbiosis who gave the keynote address, said to have a successful, symbiotic network, technology matters, but so do the people involved.

“ We can only do so much in our own organizations, but we can do much more when we step outside and start to have these dialogues, these innovative approaches,” Moller said. “ So you can really grow your business at the same time you are also developing your own community.”

Moller said his role, and Kalundborg Symbiosis’s, is to facilitate. His work consists of bringing different stakeholders together, helping them communicate and work as one unit, as well as seeing how other communities engage with industrial symbiosis and bringing that knowledge back to Denmark.

Waste as a resource

Moller said Eastern Oregon already is doing this in some ways — sharing excess energy, water or materials — between organizations. But by identifying it as the beginning of an industrial symbiosis network, there is a shared language and basis for moving forward together.

 Industry, Moller said, is about partnership and turning challenges into opportunities. Right now, one business’s waste should instead be considered an underutilized or lost resource.

If one organization uses another’s wastewater or steam as a resource, that exchange is a synergy, Moller said, but If three or more organizations participate in the transfer of waste resources back and forth, hat’s symbiosis.

“We should avoid waste, not only because it’s bad and you will get fined, but because it’s smart business,” Moller said. “This is your resource — when you buy steam, you do not only buy the energy, you also buy the water.”

If someone else can use it, then, money isn’t lost with the waste of that resource. However, because industrial symbiosis is generally a location-based practice, the available waste resources can depend upon how well a certain industry is doing.

“ The initial idea is to find where you have sustainable, responsible production based on sustainable resources locally, take that in if that’s feasible,” he said, “and then you always can have second, third subcontractors that will support that, so you actually remove the risk.”

Starting new partnerships

Industry stakeholders from companies including Lamb Weston, Oregon Potato Co., Tillamook, Umatilla Electric Cooperative and Threemile Canyon Farms attended the talk.

Dave Dillon with Food Northwest, a trade and policy advocacy organization, said part of his company’s mission is to serve as a connector of the food sector, and human connection is vital to business success. Coming together under this idea of symbiosis could be one way to form more solid relationships and connections between local businesses.

Port of Morrow Executive Director Lisa Mittelsdorf said the port is doing forms of industrial symbiosis. For example, she said the port’s wastewater system has been “a good opportunity to add beneficial use,” and that, moving forward, she expects to formalize some of these partnerships into an industrial symbiosis system or center.

“We all want to make sure that every opportunity is used to use what somebody else doesn’t need,” she said, “and so just getting (businesses) together to see what benefit could be provided to their neighbor is a great thing.”

Creating a new kind of sustainable and symbiotic relationship among various partners won’t just happen, though. Mittelsdorf said new infrastructure or transportation modes will likely need to be in place to make it possible, but that the port will seek out grants to help cover those necessary adjustments.

Debbie Radie, chief quality and stewardship officer with Boardman Foods Inc., said the next steps are to get a more formalized governance structure and hold regular meetings between industry partners. Radie said she’s excited to implement what she saw visiting Kalundborg in person last year as well as what Moller discussed as necessary in his presentation.

“ There’s already so much industrial symbiosis work being done and we can build off that,” she said. “It works well for business as well as it does for the environment and the economy.”