January 2008 : CPSUC-Contract signed with EC

Centric Austria International (CAI) as applicant and the Cork Institute of Technology - Clean Technology Centre(CTC) and the Center for Environmentally Sound Technology Transfer (CESTT) of The Administrative Center for China’s Agenda 21 (ACCA21) as partners have successfully applied a Project proposal entitled CPSUC – Capacity Building and Establishment of Cleaner Production Service Units & Campaigns for the Industry in the Less Developed Regions of China to the EuropeAid ASIA-INVEST Programme of the European Commission. After evaluation and negotiation the European Commission has awarded a grant contract to CAI as the Applicant. The project has a total budget of about 800.000 EURO and will last three years starting from March 1st, 2008.

The objective of the action is to strengthen the capacity of Asian intermediaries to promote European know-how and technologies in the field of Cleaner Production in order to close the gap between the high standards of production responsibility in Europe - reduced environmental impacts through waste and emission minimization, increased material and energy efficiency, improved quality standards, working conditions, work safety and workers’ skills – and the lower standards in the targeted regions: Sichuan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu and Qinghai provinces; Tibet, Ningxia, Guangxi and Inner Mongolia Autonomous regions; Anhui province.

>> View the map of China and involved provinces

Cleaner Production is a practicable and effective approach to make companies’ caused impacts on the environment manageable in terms of energy and resource efficiency, mitigation of emissions and waste and the improvement of working conditions and production quality to achieve modern standards. As a management concept Cleaner Production has like every other management concept initially to describe the fields of management, which are the materials and resources like raw and process materials, water and energy, and the resulting output of the operations such as products and services but also waste and emissions. The later are focused to be reduced by means of typical Cleaner Production measures to improve the environmental as well as the economical performance of a company. Because management concerns not only the physical and economical features of a company, also the human, socials and institutional dimensions of cleaner production have to be taken into account. A number of further topics are dealing with these themes such as innovation and communication or how to set up cleaner production programmes in general with the help of authorities and other interested institutions.