Common workshops

Usually an ECOPROFIT project provides a number of 10 workshops to different topics. The workshops are attended in general by the plant or production managers or the environmental managers of the companies.

Workshop contents

1. Cleaner production and waste minimisation, input/output analysis, strategies of minimisation - Overview of the project, presentation of participants, data collection, minimisation strategies, "Fun Factory" (an interactive game to learn the principles of CP).
2. Setting up an environmental team and an environmental program within the company - ECOPROFIT arguments for the top management, motivation of employees - in general and especially in an environmental project, environmental team, contract between environmental team and top management, planning of an in-company motivation meeting, first draft of the environmental program, environmental policy of a company.
3. Material flow analysis - Most important steps how to carry out a material flow analysis, examples, practical exercises.
4. Waste management, waste logistics - how to save costs, container systems, waste separation guidelines, motivation of employees how to separate waste.
5. Energy analysis - Analysis of the energy management, energy saving tips and tricks, peak load measurements, thermographic measurements, energy consumption in general.
6. Laws and Regulations - Introduction into environmental law.
7. Innovation and creativity techniques - As ECOPROFIT needs the creativity of participating companies, innovation and creativity techniques are presented and trained. Brainstorming, different innovation models are trained, specific real existing company problems are tackled by adopting the new methods.
8. Ecological purchasing, handling with hazardous material - Waste minimisation starts already at the purchasing phase; comparing different eco-labels; practical exercises for companies (different insulation material, textiles, etc); safety data sheets, symbols of hazardous materials.
9. Eco-Controlling, eco-indicators - Aspects of an environmental information system, selection of indicators, controlling, benchmarking.
10. Preparation for the award, final report - Procedure for the award, discussing the award documents, presentation of the project results through the participants (envn. policy, performances and program).

Structure of workshops - Each of the workshops is structured in

• Feed-back session - In this session every company briefly describes activities taken since the last workshop. This guarantees continuous work and control of special topics and measures.
• Information block - An expert introduces into the new main topic.
• Interactive phase - In order to foster the understanding of the new topic the participating companies are divided into smaller groups which in the practise should adopt the just learned principles. This interactive phase is supervised by the experts.
• Final discussion - Finally the results are summarised and the relevance and improvement regarding the given topic for each company are discussed. In each workshop the companies receive training material and special working sheets which they have to prepare for the next meeting. In some of the workshops special local experts or officials are invited to give short statements and to join the final discussion.