SWITCH-Asia achieves EU's set target successfully

With a view to promoting sustainable consumption and production (SCP) to Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the Food and Beverage industry, the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce has implemented a special project 'SWITCH- Asia' which had been funded by the European Union in the year 2009 which had been successfully completed in end 2012.

Emphasizing on the triple bottom line, the project has trained more than 500 enterprises in SCP, out of which close to 100 enterprises have already achieved the set target and 200 more in the process, shifting their business to the next level.

More than 50% of the enterprises in Sri Lanka fall into the Small and Medium Enterprises and make a significant contribution to the industrial output of Sri Lanka. The training programme had been mainly designed to address the technical aspect of the compliance in both sustainable consumption and production. The SMEs under the project have been able to reduce material consumption, water consumption, emissions, effluents and increase the percentage and volume of water recycled and reused, improve workforce quality and thereby increase revenue and profits. Sharing his views on the project, Project Director, Prema Cooray, said: "Along with both our international and local partners, we worked tirelessly to achieve milestones in this project. This project has brought about the much needed awareness to many stakeholders and more importantly, implemented some very laudable initiatives in optimizing resource usage.

It's a significant achievement to note that the project had played a major role in the adoption of Green Reporting System by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources."

He went on to point out that many SMEs have been able to obtain the ISO 22000:2005 and ISO 14000:2004 after the intervention of the SWITCH- Asia programme.

Their resourceful leadership shows their commitment towards adopting not only economic, but also environmentally sound sustainable technologies.

The project has been in partnership with IVAM Uva BV (The Netherlands), CII (India), Industrial Technology Institute (ITI), Industrial Services Bureau (ISB) and Industrial Development Board (IDB).