They make launch Regional Prize for Cleaner Production
The Ministries of Environment and Industry and Commerce, the Central American Commission of Commerce and Environment and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), through the Environmental Protection Program, held the launching ceremony of the V Edition of the Regional Prize for Cleaner Production, a recognition and incentive mechanism for companies that strive for continuous improvement of their products, processes and services, based on a preventive approach, for better environmental performance and increased competitiveness.
The event was led by the Minister of the Environment, Jaime David Fernández Mirabal, Duty Green, USAID Economic Policy Advisor, Manuel Cabrera, Julio Brache, president of RENAEPA and vice president of the Industrial Association of the Dominican Republic, and Miguel Escala, Rector of INTEC among others.
Cleaner Production is a preventive strategy that seeks to optimize resources and inputs such as raw materials, water and electricity and thus reduce or minimize its solid, liquid and gaseous wastes, thus achieving greater profitability in the production process, both from the economic point of view as environmental.
The Regional Prize for Cleaner Production has been promoted for eight years by the Central American Commission for Environment and Development (CCAD), the environmental agency of the Central American Integration System (SICA). This V Edition of the Award is sponsored mainly by USAID and complemented by funds from the Danish Agency for International Development (DANIDA) and the Alliance in Energy and Environment with Central America (AEA), sponsored by the cooperation of Finland and Austria.
Two years ago it was the first time that Dominican companies participated in the Prize, with 25 companies having been nominated. In the end, Dominican Republic won 3 awards and was awarded 8 honorable mentions.
The P + L in the Dominican Republic
The promotion of Cleaner Production as a sustainable development strategy is part of the lines of work that the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources promotes in the area of voluntary initiatives and performance improvement in the Private Sector, which is why it has the National CP Program established by decree, which also establishes the creation of the intersectoral CP Committee with the participation of relevant public and private stakeholders for the adoption of CP as a State Policy.
Following this line, USAID, within the framework of environmental cooperation to support the country in complying with the DR-CAFTA environmental commitments, promotes initiatives to strengthen the National CP Program. These activities include those carried out by the USAID Program for Environmental Protection executed by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Intec, which include awareness-raising activities and promotion of voluntary initiatives through pilot projects with companies.
To this are added, training activities for the internal staff of the Ministry of the Environment, in order to create a critical mass that can participate in the actions to be undertaken in the future, within the framework of the implementation of the National Policy on CP and Sustainable Consumption that is currently in the final approval stage.
Another of the activities carried out is the workshop to strengthen the technical capacities of the local consultants base, both identified by the Ministry of the Environment and by the private sector represented by RENAEPA. This with the aim of laying the foundations for a future offer of business technical services, under the vision of pollution prevention contemplated in the CP. Both activities are the beginning of a local capacity building process that aims to stimulate CP as a national development strategy.
In March of this year, consultation workshops on the National CP Policy were held with the different public and private sectors, both in Santo Domingo and Santiago de los Caballeros, with a high participation of the different sectors, and achieving the final structuring of the Policy, which will be submitted for final approval in a workshop to be held at the beginning of June.