GP enhances productivity and environmental performance - Asst.
Director NPS
by Surekha Galagoda
Green Productivity (GP) is a strategy to enhance productivity and
environmental performance for overall socio economic development.
It is the application of appropriate productivity and environmental
management tools, techniques and technologies to reduce the
environmental impact of an organisation's activities goods and services.
In two weeks we will be introducing GP in schools as a pilot project
and we plan to launch it in 25 schools this year, said Assistant
Director National Productivity Secretariat (NPS) W.M.D.S. Gunaratna.
GP was initiated in 1996 by the Asian Productivity Organisation (APO)
to strike a balance between productivity and the environment. Prior to
this initiative though most countries wanted to increase productivity
they were not concerned about the environment which resulted in many
problems.
APO wanted to strike a balance between enhancing productivity and
environment performance.
Therefore, GP was initiated as an outcome of the 1992 Rio Earth
Summit where a panel of experts were selected to study and implement GP.
Deming introduced the PDCA circle. Plan, Do, Check and Act and based
on this the GP methodology was introduced as a six-step process.
An attractive feature of GP is that it is a strategy that leads to
gains in profitability through improvements in productivity and
environmental performance . Excessive use of resources or generation of
pollution is indicative of low productivity and poor environmental
performance.
In many ways these are manufacturing defects that need to be set
right consistently. To improve the situation GP pursues a strategy based
on technical and managerial interventions. It is a process of continuous
improvement.
Through resource efficiency it works towards retaining the natural
resource capital thereby ensuring a form of savings for the environment
too.
The first step in the process is to identify ways to prevent
pollution or waste at its source as well as to reduce the level of
resource inputs by the process of rationalisation and optimisation.
Possibilities of reuse recovery and recycling are examined to salvage
the wastes generated.
The opportunities to substitute toxic or hazardous substances are
explored to reduce the lifecycle impact of the product. At this stage
the product itself is examined including packaging in the framework of
design for environment.
Ultimately the waste in its residual forms are treated adequately
while the barriers to commitment are attitudinal, information related,
technical and financial.
Three-hundred villages in Vietnam practise GP and have achieved
successful results.
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