March 2010: CPSUC project enters final year 3

In the second year of the project progress has been steady and the planned project tasks were accomplished as scheduled. A total of 13 Cleaner Production Service Units (CPSU) have progressed in 11 target provinces. Agreements on the establishment of CP services and collaboration have been implemented as foreseen with all of them. Currently a total of 30 trainers are working in the CPSUs and have in the 2nd year finalised CP audits in 20 pilot companies. Furthermore all CPSUs have started to develop CP programmes, based on a methodology introduced in the CP programme training in January 2010. The CPSUs were continuously supported during the implementation of the pilot projects by the EU and Chinese CP experts.

The successful and timely execution of activities was only possible due to committed work by all consortium members from Austria, China and Ireland; the highly motivated CPSU staff and support from the senior management of the CPSUs.

In the final third year the project team will conduct a study tour to Europe to learn from European examples to campaign Cleaner Production. The tour is scheduled for May 2010 and will cover visits to Austria, Germany, and Ireland. The remaining time will be used to establish long-term perspectives and plans, how CP campaigns can be established in the involved 11 provinces with the aim to ensure coninuation of CP activities beyond the project life time and to prepare an outreach to a bigger number of SMEs in China.