This blog is the first in a four-part series focused on eco-industrial parks – communities of businesses working together to enhance their combined environmental, economic and social performance. This blog series offers insights from related GIZ and UNIDO projects that support the uptake of materials efficiency practices to promote cleaner production and climate-resilient business infrastructures.
The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH offers a range of planning and operating approaches to help industrial park developers and managers achieve greater materials efficiency, including through the application of an international framework.
Industrial parks are often touted as engines of industrialization that contribute to the socio-economic growth of a country or a region. But, they also have the potential to cause negative environmental and social impacts, such as pollution and adverse health effects. To fully reap the benefits and to eliminate, or at least minimize, the associated liabilities and risks, industrial parks need to adopt a number of approaches that promote materials and resource efficiency, cleaner production, a circular economy and other sustainable outcomes.
Since the mid-1990s, GIZ has identified several entry points to strengthen the sustainability of industrial areas. Through its Sustainable Industrial Areas (SIA) Working Group, the agency has been developing projects and sharing knowledge on such practices from experiences in China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kosovo, Moldova, Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania.
GIZ’s concept of sustainable industrial areas integrates economic, ecological and social aspects. It aims to improve siting and site master planning of new industrial areas, develop benchmarks or sustainability parameters for industrial areas, assess the performance of existing industrial areas, retrofit existing industrial areas, improve material use efficiency and achieve cleaner production in individual companies.
GIZ’s SIA Toolbox offers a range of tools – training material, best practice examples, case studies and manuals – to help industrial park developers and managers achieve sustainability. The toolbox offers a compilation of tools for planning, designing and operating industrial areas to promote sustainable industrial development. This includes industrial symbiosis, environment-friendly techniques, resource efficient management of chemicals, and climate risk management.
Another concept developed by GIZ is the profitable resource efficient management tool, or PREMA, which aims to achieve a triple win: improve economic competitiveness through cost savings, reduce environmental impact through the more efficient use of raw materials, and enhance organization capabilities of employees and workplace safety.
The application of PREMA helps analyse costs and environmental impacts and identify areas needing improvement. The process is guided by a team of experts who visit businesses in industrial parks and train staff on step-by-step sustainable solutions. The tool has been successfully applied in the hotel, food, printing, textiles, and chemicals and colours sectors in a number of locations.
In India, the approach has been further customized for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). Here, an expert team visits a specific industry, undertakes a rapid process assessment, identifies areas of inefficiencies and losses, and then find solutions. Priority is given to implement low and no-cost measures with quick results.
To illustrate, an automobile service station in New Delhi saved 200,000 Indian rupees ($2,700) annually in electricity costs after fixing air leakages in its compressed air network and using efficient ones already available onsite, and 26,000 litres of water after fixing all water leakages at the site. An agrochemical company in Vapi, Gujarat, saved 49,920 kWh per year in energy costs, or 380,000 Indian rupees ($5,100), after replacing old light bulbs with LEDs. Additional savings of 72,800 Indian rupees ($990,000) were made after insulating and fixing an air compressor in the company’s pipeline.
As part of an overall resource efficiency approach, GIZ is consolidating inputs and practical experiences on planning, developing, operating and managing industrial parks. It does this by following the International Framework for Eco-Industrial Parks it helped develop with the World Bank and United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). The framework promotes the global development of standardized approaches for the implementation of eco-industrial parks. This includes focusing on materials efficiency as part of environmental performance indicators.
In particular, the framework helps advance firm-level materials efficiency, cleaner production and industrial symbiosis and synergies by promoting the implementation of low-carbon inputs, and reducing and reusing materials at the company and industrial park levels. It also enhances the implementation of effective waste management plans for the recycling of waste to use as little raw materials as possible.
The attractiveness of investing in eco-industrial parks rests in the provided infrastructure and services, including environmental-related ones for enterprises, and increased park management and governance structures to address the needs of the community and employees for increased environmental, social and economic performance. It is therefore key to further develop and promote the international framework to ensure that industrial parks incorporate sustainability aspects into all aspects of the planning or retrofitting process.
However, regulatory barriers still exist in the application of the framework due to lack of suitable policies, limitations in institutional capacities and inadequate planning procedures, which need to be addressed by all stakeholders involved. Despite the obstacles, aspects of the framework can be customized and further developed to suit local situations, and ultimately contribute to industrial development that is sustainable and fulfils the Sustainable Development Goals.
This blog series has been commissioned by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit / German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) under the International Climate Initiative (IKI) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).
The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the GGKP or its Partners.