Russian-Norwegian Cleaner Production Centre
CLEANER  PRODUCTION  CENTRE		 The Norwegian Society of Chartered Technical and Scientific Professionals
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   RUSSIAN-NORWEGIAN CLEANER PRODUCTION CENTRE  -  10  YEARS  OF ACTIVITY
The International Conference "Cleaner Production as a Contribution to Sustainable Development"		   



Russian-Norwegian Cleaner Production Programme
CHRONICLE OF SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT THREE LEVELS FOUR PRINCIPLES METHODOLOGY RESULTS


Sustainable development - actuality

The mankind of today has come at last to understand that the resources of the Earth, our common house, are only limited. A concept of sustainable development, the need of which was stressed by the Declaration of the World Summit, Johannesburg, 2002, had been accepted by the leaders of many nations at the World Summit, Rio-de-Janeiro, 1992.

A thrifty use of the natural resources is based on the idea of sustainable consumption and on application of such a notion as the life cycle of produce of various branches.

The stability of development, much longed - for by all people without exception, depends on the state of economy in any country, on the level of technology, on the type of social organization. And with all this the ability of the environment to satisfy not only current needs but also - what is to be specifically emphasized - the necessities to come, is to be seen upon as the main thing. Thus the basis for the stable development is a rational and thrifty use of the resources.

Russia so far has no concept of sustainable development as such, it is due to many reasons, such as not understanding of the importance of nature protective measures, absence of funds for nature restoring programmes, and what is of especial weight, insufficient environmental education that contributes to forming an appropriate social mentality. The overwhelming majority of resources sparing programmes are purposed for "mending holes", that is for solving short term nature protecting problems without taking into consideration such important factors as real investment sources, production expenses, timely pay-back of borrowed means, etc. As a matter of fact, these projects are only a description of needs and wishes.

The Cleaner Production Programme is intended to enhance activity of the engineering staff of Russian enterprises in the direction of saving resources and, as a result, of reducing waste and decreasing environmental pollution. This Programme comes being introduced to still greater extent in this country as a project capable of fulfilling the optimization of production processes without heavy expenditure.

This is the Programme of real economy of resources able of ensuring a sustainable development of Russia. The Programme sums up the latest achievements of the economically advanced countries in realization of the systemized environmental approach. Based on the Programme, the variously - specialized engineers training system envisages teaching of the planning techniques and implementation of scientific and technological projects with the objective to reduce production waste and save material and energetic resources, of course, on the condition of real financial expenditure and execution of production tasks in hand. The Programme envisages, as well, teaching to the listeners the basics of the market economy, drawing - up of business plans according to the requirements of international finance institutions, and solving the tasks of system optimization.

How appeared the Cleaner Production Programme in the country?

An agreement of co - operation in environmental protection signed by the Governments of Russia and Norway in 1992, has made it possible to use the latest world attainments in the field of enhancing economical efficiency of production processes with simultaneous solving environmental protection problems.

Our experts accepted the cleaner production methodology, proposed by the Norwegian engineers, adopted it with due regard for the Russian conditions, and started in 1994 execution of the Cleaner Production Programme at a number of enterprises and organizations of the North-West Russia.

The Programme's objective is to teach the engineering staff of industrial and agricultural enterprises how to spare all kind of resources, to reduce deleterious discharges into the environment, and thus manufacture cleaner produce. Of course, the absolute cleaner production is an inaccessible thing under the modern conditions, so the Programme is really aimed at fostering the psychology of good contriver at all managing levels.

The Russian-Norwegian Cleaner Production Centre has been set up for introducing the Cleaner Production Programme in the country, and for coordinating efforts in and monitoring this process.

First the RNC's field of application was confined by so called Barents/Euro-Arctic region of Russia (The Republic of Karelia, the provinces of Arkhangelsk and Murmansk), but in a very short time the Programme's success grew quite evident, and it was spread to many other places (Vologda, Kaliningrad, Leningrad, Lipetsk, Novgorod regions, the Republic of Komi, the cities of Saint Petersburg and Norilsk).

Nowadays the Programme is being successfully adopted by a number of industrial branches such as pulp and paper mills, extractive entities, machine building works, chemistry plants, food stuff production, municipal facilities, power stations, railway transport and others. It is already impossible to look upon the programme as a regional endeavour, it is now conquering Russia's provinces and republics, and the adjacent countries. The number of experts gone through the Programme courses is written with three zeroes. The study itself is arranged in such a way that lecturing is combined with an active practical training of the future specialists.

It is important to stress the following, all the particulars being easily found at this web-site:

Analysis of the course papers, put into practice by enterprises when the listeners were doing the course has shown that every Rouble invested into the Programme yields them 2 to 5 Roubles of net profit!


Successful adoption of the cleaner production strategy and related programmes by the enterprise is a step necessary to ensure the most rational passage to introduction and development of modern environmental management systems (EMS) with subsequent certification according to the ISO 14000 family of international standards

  Those who would like to get into detail as to the RNC's activity, to familiarize oneself with the Cleaner Production Programme and to learn about the results of it being introduced in various regions and at various enterprises, are recommended to refer to the "Cleaner Production in Russia and in the CIS" bulletin issued by the Centre. Its electronic version in Russian is placed on our web-site, too.