I N T E R V I E W
Will cleaner production methods succeed in minimizing pollution?
Navratil Bohumil is currently the president of the Association of Managers for Cleaner Production in the Czech Republic.He is also a manager of the Association of Trainers in Cleaner Production. He joined the Czech Cleaner Production Center in 1994 and is currently a lecturer and consultant.
Could you provide background information about the Czech Cleaner Production Center?
The Czech Cleaner Production Center (CPC) is a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization. The mission of CPC is to play a catalytic and coordinating role in promoting cleaner production in the Czech Republic. The CPC achieves its mission by promoting the philosophy and practices of cleaner production to industry in the Czech Republic.
The CPC was established within the framework of the Czech-Norwegian Cleaner Production Project in 1994. The project aimed at building cleaner production capacity and was financed by the Norwegian government. The project had two main goals: to train specialists and to establish the CPC so that national experts could take over and continue the work after the completion of the Czech-Norwegian project.
When this project started in 1992 at the Education Center in Zlin, all trainers were Norwegian specialists. By the second year, the trainers were a combination of Norwegian and Czech specialists. One year later, when the CPC was established, the training was run entirely by the Czech specialists under the supervision of the Norwegian Society of Chartered Engineers.
What is the CP philosophy?
The Cleaner Production philosophy focuses on economically effective ways to prevent production of wastes and pollutants. The philosophy can be defined as "the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy to processes, products and services so as to increase efficiency and reduce risks to humans and the environment." The application of cleaner production in industries all over the world shows that it is possible to reduce the industrial pollution significantly by use of preventive techniques and to enhance corporate competitiveness at the same time.
What are the CPC's objectives?
The main objective is to improve the environmental performance and the competitive advantage of industry by means of cleaner production. This is carried out by demonstrating projects that show to factory managers that it is possible to solve major environmental problems without relying on investments. One can achieve higher efficiency in production and better economic performance - the so called "win-win" strategy.
Do you think there is a need for pollution prevention in the Czech Republic? And if so, why?
Yes, certainly there is a need. Pollution prevention is particularly needed by the Czech industry. Over the past years, the environment has been destroyed in many regions, and more waste has been produced than in most Western countries.
Can you name some of the main accomplishments of the CPC?
Our main success is that we have proved that it is possible to reduce the amount of wastes going into the environment by 5 to 25 percent without depending on investments, given the present conditions in the Czech Republic.
How do you prove that?
About 60 projects have been implemented in different factories of different sizes from different industrial sectors. The smallest factory has five employees, while the biggest factory has about 1,700 employees. The immediate financial savings are about 42 million crowns per year in total. This means lower production costs and higher profits for the companies. In addition, the projects brought about positive effects on the environment without investments.
What do you mean by "without investments?"
It means that no monetary investments are required to implement the Cleaner Production measures. The CP options can be divided into three groups. The first group is realized without investments and still enables immediate financial savings. The second group needs some investments whose pay back period is less than half a year. The third group needs investments which have more than half a year pay back period. These measures are aimed at making changes in the production process that make the production less polluting.
Does this apply to any type of factory?
No. It depends on the factory. The step-by-step methodological approach should be applied. I give you a good example which involves waste water. The first step is to find some potential for cleaner production. This means finding the biggest flow of discharge of wastes as well as the associated financial losses. This enables us to identify which flow needs focus. Then we analyze all the steps around this flow in order to locate the key places where wastes are discharged, where they are produced, and why they are produced.
This information serves as a basis for the next activity. At first we define the environmental policy. This policy is the basis of the implementation plan of cleaner production. The next step is organization. Steering groups are named and working groups are set up to analyze and develop measures for reducing wastes and to propose more effective technology.
When we find the most waste-producing areas and their root causes, we generate ideas for solutions through creative thinking, such as brainstorming. It is at this stage that measures without investments are prioritized in consideration of limited financial resources at companies in general. Then we evaluate these ideas and select those best suited for individual factories. They must be technically, economically and environmentally acceptable.
Only when these three criteria are met, we start with preparing an implementation plan, along with projected cash flow, which we then recommend to the management. The management in turn assesses our case study and reports to us if it is feasible. Immediate measures are implemented in the meantime. When the management approves our case study, our demonstration project is over.
It is then simply a matter of repeating these practices throughout training courses. One of them is "Train the Trainer" which is intended for postgraduate students and lasts for one year. These specialists must prove that they are able to develop, manage and implement a project, and they must carry it out with success before being awarded their certificate.
Another type of project is a regional project. It aims to make the management in factories more environmentally friendly on a regional basis. The focus is on educating participants as well as repeating project circles to yield better results. As a whole, our experience with this approach has been very successful. The evidence is that when the project was repeated in the second and third years, our trainees generated their own ideas for changes in production and put them into practice without our supervision. As a result, production efficiency was improved and the required investment and operating costs of end-of-pipe technologies were decreased.
When you say end-of-pipe technology, do you mean environmentally friendly technology?
I do not know what you mean by environmentally friendly technology. It is a very broad concept. The end-of-pipe technology is a common concept under which we understand all measures that catch pollutants and keep them from entering one component of the environment. But on the other hand, if you catch pollutants you must do something with them. For example, if you catch a sludge from waste water, you protect the river. But if you burn this sludge, you pollute the air. We can say that the end-of-pipe technology simply transfers the problems from one component of the environment to another without protecting the environment as a whole.
The firm KOH-I-NOOR in Prague is one example of our success in this field. This factory is situated in the neighborhood of the Ministry of Environment, and they were required to build a water treatment facility. They had initially planned a 21 million-crown investment, but during the first cycle of the course they changed their plan to invest only 11 million. They went ahead with the project, and in the following year they built the cleaning station with just a 6 million crown investment. What is interesting is that these changes also brought a reduction in the operating costs of this end-of-pipe technology by half a million crowns. This is a major achievement of cleaner production.
What are your future plans?
We will continue to promote cleaner production. To this end, we are helping our government in devising and implementing preventive policy and cleaner production programs. Last year, we developed the second project dealing with programs of cleaner production. We assessed the potential of cleaner production in this country and recommended some changes and new measures in the legislation to support a cleaner production approach in our industry.
So, you plan to do a lot of lobbying? Who will you lobby?
We are in contact with the Ministry of Environment. Also, we have put together an interesting manual about cleaner production for the Ministry of Industry and Trade. We are now waiting for their decisions and approval. Meanwhile, we are still conducting courses for cleaner production and also courses related to EMS (Environmental Management System) based on ISO 14001. (ISO stands for International Standard Organization.)
How will you link this new management of industry with cleaner production?
If we want to sustain an established Cleaner Production philosophy, we must make changes in our management so as to make it fit the proposal and criteria of the standard 14001. ISO 14001, which deals with the system of environmentally orientated management, can be applied to every industrial and service sector. ISO 14001 is helpful in ensuring long-term sustainability of cleaner production programs at companies because it significantly changes the organization and the management of production.
REC * EMTC * PUBLICATIONS * INSIGHT * WINTER-SPRING 1997
