Dinh Vu Industrial Park in nothern Hai Phong city. (Illustrative photo - Source: VNA) The two-day workshop was co-held by the Eco-Industrial Park Project ManagementBoard in Vietnam, and the Ministry of Planning and Investment in collaborationwith the Vietnam Cleaner Production Centre between January 13 and 14.
The workshop is part of the project “Eco-industrialparks intervention in Vietnam - Perspective from the Global Eco-Industrial ParkProgramme" co-operated by the ministry and the United Nations IndustrialDevelopment Organization (UNIDO) with funding from the Swiss Federal EconomicAgency (SECO).
The project is designed to promote activities to support the industrial parksin participating in the project to identify opportunities for eco-industrialparks, to bring environmental and economic benefits to businesses through aseries of training activities to strengthen capacity in resource efficiency incleaner production (RECP) and industrial symbiosis.
Speaking at the workshop, Le Thanh Quan, director ofthe ministry’s Department of Economic Zones Management, said the eco-industrialpark model could play a positive role with the national sustainable developmentstrategy only when it is replicated across the country, with different supportin policy, technology, finance, information and close connection amongstakeholders.
Dinh Manh Thang, an expert from the Vietnam Cleaner Production Centre, saidevery industry in any size and sector could increase production efficiencythrough systematic methods.
Increasing resource efficiency at businesses wouldprovide significant social and economic benefits, not simply environmentalbenefits, he said.
Building and managing a database for production andconsumption of raw materials, energy, water and substances continuously andsystematically would be an important and decisive basis for the successfulexecution of RECP, he said.
This was an important strategy to help businessesachieve their green growth goals and progress to sustainable development, headded.
Dick van Beers, an expert on eco-industrial parks fromUNIDO, said industrial symbiosis was the cooperation between several differentfacilities.
Such facilities are often geographically close to eachother, such as companies and factories in clusters or industrial zones thatexchange resources (for example, materials, energy, water and by-products) thatcan be used as substitutes for products or raw materials that would otherwisebe imported from elsewhere or treated as waste.
He also cited examples of industrial symbiosis in someeco-industrial parks around the world.
For example, Kalundborg Industrial Park (Denmark),after applying industrial symbiosis, has reduced energy use, CO2 emissions byup to about 250,000 tonnes a year, water use by 30 percent and other wastes.
NISP Industrial Park (UK), in seven years, has saved 1.3billion GBP (1.77 billion USD), with additional sales increasing by 1.3 billionpounds, and at the same time reduced up to 39 million tons of CO2.
At the workshop, participants also discussed howto manage eco-industrial parks and provide services for businesses in theeco-industrial parks, key concepts, methods and tools in identifying andimplementing RECP, as well as industrial symbiosis./.
VNA
