The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide - Democrats Against UN ...

The Local Agenda 21 Planning Guide
from a corrective to a preventative approach in handling their wastes, municipal governments have compelling reasons to promote
pollution prevention through cleaner production. The municipal mandate to manage wastes and to deliver clean water means that
local governments have a vested interest in pollution prevention in order to avoid the steadily increasing costs of water treatment
facilities, waste management, and other remediation measures. Municipalities also have a pecuniary interest in helping local
companies to increase efficiency and profitability in order to support the municipal tax base.
The case of Graz demonstrates how local governments can facilitate a preventative approach to pollution and waste problems by
forming partnerships with the academic, business, and industrial sectors and by mobilizing the technical expertise and
entrepreneurial skills of these communities. Such partnerships facilitate the transfer of sophisticated pollution prevention
technologies and methodologies from advanced technical institutes to the business and industrial communities. In this way, local
governments can play a role in demonstrating to industries and businesses how they can profit from pollution prevention.
Minimizing polluting emissions and increasing the efficiency and profitability of private companies will result in cost savings for
municipal governments and environmental benefits for the entire municipality.
Program Description
ECOPROFIT Graz, ongoing since 1991, is a project that attempts to put into practice the concept of profit from pollution prevention.
The program works within the existing legislative framework to introduce companies to new low-and non-waste technologies and to
demonstrate how these technologies can increase efficiency and profits while preventing pollution. Successful private-sector
examples of economic and ecological waste minimization are then marketed to attract wider acceptance of the preventative approach
within the business community.
The municipality’s Department of Environmental Protection, in cooperation with the Graz University of Technology, initiated
ECOPROFIT. ECOPROFIT (ECOlogical PROject For Integrated environmental Technologies) uses an innovative approach that
couples information and technical assistance with marketing support.
ECOPROFIT highlights improved management techniques and production processes based on the closed-cycle concept. The closedcycle
production scheme used in ECOPROFIT is based on the concept of a circular, non-linear flow of materials similar to the
recycling of materials in natural ecosystems. Although there are always some losses of materials from the production process, the
idea is to maximize the recycling of materials into the original production process or to use the materials lost from one production
process as inputs into another production process. The application of closed-cycle pollution prevention measures integrates
economic and ecological considerations by increasing efficiency and profits while reducing wastes and pollution.
The Waste Minimization Research Group of the Institute for Chemical Engineering at the Graz University of Technology, which
heads the project, is investigating strategies for closed-cycle production and has investigated related international research activities
on waste minimization and ecologically conscious design. Previous efforts in this area have been carried out in the United States,
Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Information about the ECOPROFIT project was widely disseminated to the public and to local companies in order to recruit
interested participants. Five companies were chosen for the initial phase of the program, according to criteria based on their
representative potential for wider applications of the project results. Each company had to be a “typical” size for the city, had to
employ commonly used technology, and had to be willing to play a role in the public relations activities associated with the project.
Following selection, company personnel were trained in the concept of closed-cycle production. A tool kit was made available to
interested companies, including manuals, data sheets, videos, and other training materials.
The initial companies in the ECOPROFIT project included three printing companies of different sizes (from six employees to 500
employees), a large vehicle repair garage with 230 employees, and a wholesale coffee roaster and chain-store company with 342
employees. Each had released emissions into the air and water as well as solid wastes with varying toxicity. An introductory
workshop was held to train the concerned representatives of these companies in ECOPROFIT methods and data collection
methodologies. Program managers felt that it was necessary to establish a basis for trust; the company representatives were assured
that the internal data of the companies would be confidential.
The following principles were used as guidelines that the participating companies were encouraged to adopt:
• anything that leaves the production process should be considered as a product or raw material that can be used
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