According to Mr Nguyen Truong Thien - Director of the enterprise: "Before joining cleaner production, our most ominous problem was that solid waste and emissions had not been properly treated before being discharged into the environment.

Each year, the factory discharges 3.000m3 of untreated waste water and 80 tons of untreated solid waste (waste rattan bark) into the environment. More ominously, waste water also contains many dangerous chemicals such as H2O2, NaOH, SiO2 ... Besides, a large amount of gas and dust dispersed into the air during the production process has also greatly affected the health of workers and the surrounding environment".

In 2008, the enterprise was selected by Quang Nam Department of Industry and Trade as one of first units in Quang Nam to get the support from Cleaner production in industry component (CPI) for application of cleaner production solutions. To implement cleaner production measures, initially, the factory has established a cleaner production team to inspect and identify obstacles, at the same time, analysis and select optimal solutions to save energy and natural resources while protecting production environment. After that, the enterprise has selected a range of measures to implement cleaner production, these solutions mainly focus on replacing rattan bleaching system, building waste water treatment system and rattan drying system, designing lid for rattan boiling tank, installing dust collecting system ...

Beginning with simple and inexpensive internal management solutions, the enterprise has achieved unexpected results. Specifically, in the past, for cutting rattan, workers often measured, cut and used gas to bend rattan at the same time. However, only a simple change which is to measure and cut before bending has helped the enterprise save 40% of money for gas. Besides, the installation of natural lighting plastic sheets to take advantage of sunlight for production and the replacement of incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs have helped the factory save tens of millions of VND for electricity per month.

Upon entering the second stage with solutions which require greater investment, the enterprise continued to gain positive results. Specifically, previously, the factory had 7 rattan bleaching tanks, including grey rattan and white rattan bleaching tanks with the capacity of 3m3 per tank, bleaching by batches with 130kg of material rattan for each batch. The tanks used many chemicals and bleached at normal temperature, so the bleaching process usually took a lot of time (30 hours per batch). Besides, due to being made of cement, the tanks were often eroded by chemicals. Therefore, the enterprise has invested in installing a new stainless steel rattan bleaching system which has a heating system. This change has helped reduce the amount of chemicals used to bleach by 40% and the bleaching time by 50%. Particularly at this bleaching stage, it is estimated that the factory could save VND30 million of production costs each month.

Besides economic benefits, the factory also gained significant environmental benefits from these solutions. Specifically, after two years of implementing cleaner production solutions, the enterprise has reduced 3.7 tons of CO2 emissions, 1,300 m3 of waste water and 10,800kg of waste chemicals each year.

Evaluating benefits which the cleaner production has provided the enterprise, Mr. Thien said: " Cleaner production has brought not only economic or environmental benefits but also more remarkable results for the enterprise such as the confirming the brand, enhancing our prestige especially in foreign markets. So, after finishing the component, we will continue to implement measures to maintain significant results which have been achieved".

By Minh Duc