Industrial synergies – be they, the single by-product exchanges between two companies or the comprehensive industrial symbiosis networks involving numerous industrial synergies – have been recognized for their potential to improve industrial resource efficiency and provide simultaneous economic benefits. With increasing research on maximizing the implementation of industrial symbiosis initiatives per se, the notion of quality of these implemented exchanges has been disregarded. Nevertheless the quality and consideration of whole production life cycle impacts of industrial symbiosis initiatives are important to ensure harmonic and sustainable development. To develop and promote a strategy for advancement of new and qualitative industrial synergies the analysis and evaluation of existing examples of collaboration is necessary. To provide a means for evaluation and comparison of the quality of industrial synergies, a qualitative evaluation method is developed. An illustration of the evaluation method is presented through two case studies of industrial synergies identified in the brewery industry and the wood processing industry in Latvia. The results of these case studies provide valuable information for decision makers in Latvia and industrial symbiosis practitioners worldwide. Case study results show that only few of the considered self-organized industrial synergies are beneficial regarding all three – environmental quality, economic quality and geographic proximity – evaluation categories. This leads to the conclusion that these three aspects create a three-layer filter for development of qualitative industrial synergies and the quality of each category should be considered before the planning stage of such collaborations.