Benefits of Cleaner Production

Cleaner production is relevant to all industries, whether they are small or big, or they have a low or high consumption of raw materials, energy, and water. For far the most companies there is a potential of reducing the resource consumption with 10-15%!

Cleaner enterprises are better enterprises

Why? Because cleaner enterprises have minimised their losses of raw materials and products, thus giving them a higher production yield and an overall better economy and competitiveness.

Benefits of Cleaner Production

Years of experience show that cleaner production yields economic returns as well as environmental benefits. Some of the benefits are:

• Improved production efficiency;
• Better utilisation of raw materials, water and energy;
• Recovery of valuable by-products;
• Less pollution;
• Lower cost for waste disposal and wastewater treatment;
• Improved public image; and
• Improved occupational health and safety.

Less use of raw materials and energy

The most convincing benefit of cleaner production is its ability to reduce the consumption of resource and materials.

Savings in energy and materials bring direct reductions in production costs, which again make the company more competitive.

With the increasing cost of raw materials, energy and water, no company can afford to lose these resources in the form of waste.

New and improved market opportunities

Increasing consumer awareness of environmental issues has led to a spurt in demand of green products in the international market. Consequently, if you put in conscious efforts towards cleaner production, you open up new market opportunities and produce better quality products, saleable at a higher price.

Better access to finances

Investment proposals based on cleaner production contain detailed information on the economic, technical and environmental feasibility of the planned investment. This gives a very solid basis for achieving financial support from banks or environmental funds.

On the international market, financial institutions are awakening to the problems of environmental degradation, and are now scrutinising applications for loans from an environmental angle.

Better image of your company

Cleaner production reflects and improves the overall image of your company. Needless to mention, a company with a green image has a better acceptance both by the society as well as the regulatory authorities.

ISO 14000

Cleaner production will make it much easier to implement an environmental management system such as ISO 14000. This is because most of the initial work already has been carried out through the cleaner production assessment. An ISO 14000 certificate can be a market opener, giving better access to export markets. Having made a cleaner production assessment will maker it much easier to implement an environmental management system as ISO 14001.

Better working environment

Apart from improving the economical and environmental performance, cleaner production can also improve the occupational health and safety conditions for the employees.

Favourable working conditions can boost the morale of staff and at the same time foster a concern for controlling waste. Such actions will help your company gain a competitive edge.

Better compliance with environmental regulations

Meeting the regulatory standards for discharge of wastes (liquid, solid or gaseous) requires often installation of expensive and complex pollution control systems like wastewater treatment plants.

With cleaner production the treatment of residual effluents normally becomes easier and cheaper. This is because cleaner production leads to an all round reduction in wastes: volume-wise; load-wise; and even toxicity-wise!