Green Productivity

CONDUCTING GREEN PRODUCTIVITY CLINICS (GPC) FOR BUSINESS AND COMMUNITY IN MAURITIUS

OBJECTIVE OF GPC

• To provide an opportunity and access to the SMEs, hotel establishments and community representatives to seek counsel with a panel of GP experts / local consultants
• Help develop ‘low investment – moderate return' project interventions in organizations to improve their profitability and reduce pollution at source
• To facilitate the integration of Green Productivity in the services offered by the local consultants in Mauritius
• Identify linkages between business, governance and community by understanding concerns of the community on key issues

Implementation of GP will have both immediate as well as long term benefits in the following areas:

• lowering its operational and environmental compliance costs and by preventing the generation of waste through efficient resource utilization. This can also reduce or eliminate long-term liabilities and clean-up costs. Furthermore, disposal costs are reduced when the volume of waste is decreased.
• providing businesses with a competitive advantage. It will increase productivity growth rates in businesses as a result of which market share and profitability would increase.
• Providing means to justify wage increases, improves health and safety in the workplace foe workers.
• Obtaining increased support from policy makers, economists and environmentalists because this form of growth will accelerate economic expansion in a sustainable manner.

The pilot GP clinics are focusing on energy efficiency and productivity improvement. Thus, green productivity opportunity assessments have been conducted to identify opportunities to reduce energy losses and enhance productivity.

Green Productivity Opportunity Assessment (GPOA) is a management tool that is being used and it undertakes systematic and objective review of manufacturing processes, products and services. It is designed to identify opportunities for increasing productivity and profitability, while reducing the environmental impacts and associated risks to the enterprise. On the other hand, the GPOA is a proactive approach to reduce environmental impacts at source itself and enhance productivity. GPOA, as the name suggests, is an opportunity-finding rather than a fault-finding exercise, thus different from an environmental audit. The latter is basically compliance-oriented is often considered as a fault-finding exercise. It ends with the situation analysis of the business's environmental impacts and provides an idea as to the position of the firm with respect to the relevant environmental legislation. It does not initiate a problem-solving process. Very importantly, SMEs are rather averse to terms such as “audit” and treat audits as inspections.

Two pilot GP clinics have been conducted in:

1. A tea manufacturing factory.

The GPOA identified opportunities:

• to reduce electrical energy losses, with a potential of reduction of electrical bill charges of 25% - 50% during low seasons.
• To improve GP indicators (such as boiler efficiency monitoring) and production control parameters. These indicators the enterprise capacity for management by fact.

2. A small sized hotel.

The GPOA identified opportunities:

• For composting of organic waste
• Reduction of electrical energy consumption through modifications in air conditioning systems, utilization of energy saving bulbs and changes in the settings of the standby generator
• Reduction of water consumption