工业生态学（Industrial ecology，简称IE）又称产业生态学，是对开放系统的运作规律通过人工过程进行干预和改变，在一般的开放系统中资源和资金经过一系列的运作最终结果是变成废物垃圾，而工业生态学所研究的就是如何把开放系统变成循环的封闭系统，使废物转为新的资源并加入新一轮的系统运行过程中。

工业生态学的概念最早是在****年的《科学美国人》（Scientific American）杂志上由通用汽车研究实验室的罗伯特·弗罗斯彻（Robert Frosch）和尼古拉斯·格罗皮乌斯（Nicholas E. Gallopoulous）提出的。他们的观点是“为什幺我们的工业行为不能像生态系统一样，在自然生态系统中一个物种的废物也许就是另一个物种的资源，而为何一种工业的废物就不能成为另一种的资源？如果工业也能像自然生态系统一样就可以大幅减少原材料需要和环境污染并能节约废物垃圾的处理过程。”

Industrial ecology (IE) is the study of material and energy flows through industrial systems. The global industrial economy can be modeled as a network of industrial processes that extract resources from the Earth and transform those resources into commodities which can be bought and sold to meet the needs of humanity. Industrial ecology seeks to quantify the material flows and document the industrial processes that make modern society function. Industrial ecologists are often concerned with the impacts that industrial activities have on the environment, with use of the planet's supply of natural resources, and with problems of waste disposal. Industrial ecology is a young but growing multidisciplinary field of research which combines aspects of engineering, economics, sociology, toxicology and the natural sciences.