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Abstract Air pollution has posed health and environmental threats since the Industrial Revolution. Technological solutions present major expenses for industry, yet nature's ecosystems also provide pollution uptake. In the pursuit of techno‐ecological sustainable design, this work presents a framework for spatially‐explicit industrial site design that determines where and when ecological restoration should be considered. The framework considers land use changes and identifies the cheapest balance between technological and ecological uptake for industrial landscapes, including the impacts of long term ecological growth dynamics. This work presents the framework's construction along with a case study conducted for a coal‐fired power station in Ohio. The results provide spatial maps of proposed restoration areas, projected savings values, and spatial‐temporal maps that consider annual budget constraints. The results demonstrate a significant sensitivity to land use restoration costs and highlights ecological advantages, like simultaneous uptake of different chemical species. 

By including ecosystems in process design, it becomes possible to develop synergies between technological and ecological systems to establish islands of environmental sustainability. Such an approach can also ensure that human activities do not degrade ecosystems—the very systems that are essential for our sustainability. This work evaluates the idea of including ecosystems as unit operations in process design [1] while accounting for the intermittency and growth of ecological systems. The technology of selective catalytic reduction (SCR) and a forest ecosystem are both capable of mitigating nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) emissions and are designed to support a chloralkali process near Galveston, Texas. The cost of the forest ecosystem taking up NO₂is found to be one‐fourth of the cost of the SCR. However, as the capacity of vegetation to take up emissions varies with seasons, the chloralkali process needs to adjust its manufacturing rate accordingly. The result of such adaptation to local ecosystems can be manufacturing with net zero emissions and a step toward environmental sustainability. This study demonstrates the need for further research to address the practical and theoretical aspects of industry and ecosystems to establish mutually beneficial relationships that are economically, ecologically, and societally viable.