Sustainable Systems Design & Circular Economy

The sustainable solutions, guidelines, measures and metrics that are desperately needed require a comprehensive systems approach. Frameworks need to balance sustainability and resilience goals and must be quantitative to support wider adoption. The work in our group has demonstrated that biological ecosystem characteristics can lead to sustainability AND resilience improvements at multiple system scales.  This includes design guidance for things like Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs), Eco-Industrial Networks (EINs), Net Zero Communities (NZCs) manufacturing systems, water networks, and supply chains. It has also focused on measures and metrics that support Circular Economy achievement.

Industry does not look like nature, there is significantly less complex internal resource cycling.
E4C Seminar Series: Sustainability Needs Systems Solutions – Astrid Layton (Jan 22, 2025) This video shows highlights from the E4C Research Seminar “Engineering Design for Sustainability: Learning from Nature’s Systems to Actually Achieve Waste Equals Food.” In this clip, Dr. Astrid Layton presents sustainability as a systems-level problem with systems-level solutions. From the seminar’s description: Natural ecosystems are an untapped source of quantitative design inspiration for improving the sustainability of human networks. Nature’s achievement of sustainable operations within its ecosystems are the result of millions of years of design iterations. These complex systems are made up of interacting species that effectively use all available resources to support species’ needs while maintaining system-level functions.

Our lab’s work is based on the hypothesis that quantitative design from biological ecosystems can teach us how to “keep products, materials, and components in use at their highest value at all times”– def. of circular economy, Ellen MacArthur Foundation. You can learn about how inspiration from the way ecological food webs function is helping to suggest route for improving our recycling/reuse/waste economy (also known as Circular Economy) with Texas A&M Engineering’s podcast SoundBytes Season 1 Episode 28.

You can learn more about our search to define sustainability-supporting design guidelines using biological food webs, including characteristics from the brown food chain (video below), in Texas A&M Engineering News’ article “Following nature’s cue, researchers build successful, sustainable industrial networks” by Vandana Suresh (April 26, 2021).

Dead stuff: The secret ingredient in our food chain – John C. Moore, TED-Ed (Mar 20, 2014) View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/dead-stuff-… When you picture the lowest levels of the food chain, you might imagine herbivores happily munching on lush, living green plants. But this idyllic image leaves out a huge (and slightly less appetizing) source of nourishment: dead stuff. John C. Moore details the “brown food chain,” explaining how such unlikely delicacies as pond scum and animal poop contribute enormous amounts of energy to our ecosystems. Lesson by John C. Moore, animation by TED-Ed.

Our publications on this work include:

Improving and addressing analysis approaches used for green builds like LEED and urban settings:

Circularity in manufacturing systems of different levels:

Ecological Window of vitality containing the job shop, flow line, and cellular system case studies.

Circular Economy (CE) advancement efforts:

Sustainability and resilience in industrial networks:

Sustainable and resilient industrial water networks:

EIP designs showing link between the FW metric nestedness (NODF) and reduced freshwater use.

Sustainable and resilient supply chains: