This a a dissipative structure.
This pattern is indispensable when considering the resilience/sustainability and/or points of weakness in a given “system”. It’s the first point of view to consider when “closing loops”.
It is an archetype studied in great detail in GreenMBA‘s, Systems Thinking, Permaculture and elsewhere.* For me, it is helpful to keep this pattern / structure / archetype / mental model in mind when assessing and mapping the throughputs (feedstocks) that passes through (metabolism) a system (form), giving it its dynamic nature. For example, when one is observing and surveying the operations of a farm, ask: what is required from off site in order for the farm to function, and what (financial/environmental/social) losses are incurred as a consequence of its operations and effluent flow?
The modern industrial equivalent of this perspective is _perhaps_ the Profit and Loss statement, where the in/out flows are monetized and considered in isolation (as “line items”), with energy and materials becoming “feedstock costs” to “value creation”, and product and waste (“non-product” in Gil Friend’s nomenclature) are separated into revenue and expense distinctions. In this system, the consequences of not establishing a waste to food relationship is either a cost of doing business or an externality.
But in a resource aware economy, employing this perspective goes a long way in expanding awareness of critical dependencies in proposed solutions, and when used in conjunction with Liebig’s Law of the Minimum, is an excellent way to assess and design resilient and thrivable systems. (e.g. The dependence of “Renewable Energy” schemes on Rate Earth Metals availability.)
[This perspective is rarely taught or seen in policy leaders, and it is why I continue to thump that Donella Meadows' Thinking in Systems, Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline, Lovins x 2 + Hawken's Natural Capitalism, etc. are the cannon of ecological and social regeneration, as they are the vision and language that are required to "grok" the whole systems in play.]
Now, if we take a step up into the “meta” perspective of the greater network, what we see is a web of relationships. Of course, industrial capitalism rarely does this, (although “value chain” awareness as a risk mitigation is quickly becoming more widespread,) but ultimately what we are realizing is that the lone cowboy of hyper-individual American wild-west capitalism shoots itself in the thigh from the saddle when it realizes that it is actually dependent on a host of dependencies… it just didn’t know it thanks to cheap energy and (other) externalities.
In an ecosystem or some other such “natural” network pattern, each of the inputs and outputs are themselves in relationship with another structure (pattern) and so on, (theoretically) ad infinitum. This is “waste equals food” or–at the meta level–”the web of life”.
So, when presented with “sustainable” systems or proposals, I use this structure to critique processes because it helps me to conceive of the “footprint” of a given endeavor. It is a handy, but at times discouraging toolset. That is, when we see how interconnected the network of dependence of our modern system is, and furthermore how most of these processes–even when they profess to be “renewable” or “sustainable”–are actually dependent on the keystone species of the modern human ecology: Oil, then we truly see the daunting task at hand.
Remember this structure, because after we get all fired up about Growing Power Aquaponics in a future post, I am going to use it to blow a hole in the footprint of the system, and then ask for collective help picking up the pieces and potentially rearranging them in such a way that we address this vulnerability and make the systems that much more resilient by bringing the various feedstocks closer to home.
More on Dissipative Systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipative_system
* the work of Gil Friend, CEO Natural Logic and Author of The Truth About Green Business also comes to mind as a personal influence.