Interview du Professeur Suren Erkman

In this context we can stress the essential part played by the Ecopal association which brings together many businesses and now has more than 15 years’ experience of industrial ecology. Dunkirk must now seek to deploy this expertise outside its own area, remembering that it was a pioneer. In this respect, the study by the SOFIES consultancy and project management firm, carried out at the request of Dunkirk Urban Council and in close collaboration with Grand Port Maritime de Dunkerque, represents the first step towards a more marketing-based approach aimed at making the attractiveness of the area better known. The study’s goal is to put in place a coherent regional dynamic which would pool all its energies, notably by identifying inter-company movements of raw materials, finished products, by-products and waste, and the possible strategies for recycling them in an innovative way. So the area, already identified as a hub of industrial ecology, will attract new investors and new skills, and continue to transform its industrial fabric, moving it on, for example, towards bio-economic activities with added value, or the recycling of CO₂ emissions. This dynamic of coherent positioning of the Dunkirk area is especially strategic for its future as the global context is changing rapidly, with increasing constraints on the use of fossil fuels and the emergence of new digital technologies.”