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While the term ‘Cleaner Production’ mainly applies to business the same principles and some techniques can equally be applied to your household.
Cleaner production means:
- Generating less waste
- Generating wastes which are less polluting
- Using materials, water and energy efficiently
- Generating lower costs and higher profits.
Business
Look around your site and at your processes to see if there are any areas where you can generate less waste, less toxic waste or you can reduce materials, energy and water usage.
Water can be saved, by turning off taps, by reusing water and collecting and using roof run-off. Energy can be saved by turning off unnecessary lights and equipment, by using better insulation and ventilation, and by choosing energy efficient appliances and systems.
Waste disposal can cost your company a large amount of money every year (ask your accounts department), and the storage and transport of wastes have the potential to cause pollution. The best way to reduce costs and the risk of pollution from your wastes is to follow the waste management hierarchy:
- Prevent the production of waste in the first instance
- Reduce the amount of waste you generate and its strength
- Reuse as much material as you can
- Recycle what you cannot reuse
- Recover usable product or energy from your wastes.
Use the Inventory of energy consuming items and material recycling options for your business to help you through the production review process.
Prevention
This is the best way to cleaner production. It requires you to breakdown the stages of your production process and identify which produce the most waste and question whether this waste is necessary. It may be that you can eliminate this stage or replace it with different materials or technology. Remember, that the cost of implementing change to a production stage is likely to be off-set by reduced cost of materials and waste disposal.
Reduction
Minimise packaging from your suppliers and to your customers and substitute less toxic materials wherever possible. This will help you to reduce the environmental impact of your wastes and reduce costs. It will also help with your health and safety obligations. Consider redesigning your site and processes so that they are more efficient and generate less waste.
Reuse
Examine processes and systems on site to identify where material can be reused. For example, waste paper can be used in packaging, pallets can be repaired and it may be possible to use wastewater for irrigation.
Recycling
Check the recycling directory for the Taranaki region or contact the Taranaki Regional Council for a free brochure.
Recovery
Recovery is a term generally applied to heat recovery from burning a material in a specialised unit, and not burning in the open air. The heat produced is normally recovered by a heat exchanger to be used in another process. An example of this is a sawmill burning its woodchip waste for its kiln drying process.
For further assistance on any of these levels of waste management contact Taranaki Regional Council’s Waste Minimisation Officer.
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