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Environmental and
Economic Results Achieved |
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Washing water: reduced by 20%
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Electricity consumption:
reduced by 7.8%
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Operating cost: reduced by 55%
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Investment in the awareness and
inventive programs: US$ 4,835
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Savings for the year 2000: US$
76,522
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Return on investment (ROI) for the
year 2000: 1,483%
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Contact:
Chairman, Green Productivity Group.
Dept of Environmental Engineering
Chiang Mai University,
Thailand
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About the Company
A
cleaner
production
program was implemented in the Shwee Shwian Food Co., a medium-sized ginger
factory in northern Thailand. The factory produces preserved ginger for
export. Ginger was taken fresh from farms and washed by machine.
The Problem To Be Solved
The major problem at the factory was that raw
ginger has a high soil content, which required large amounts of washing
water and therefore generated high volumes of waste water. It was estimated
that about 12% of the weight of the raw ginger was actually soil coating the
outside of the ginger.
The Solution: Greening the
Supply Chain
It was concluded that a
supply chain greening program should be introduced to reduce soil
content and thereby decrease the amount of water used for washing.
The Implementation
The company set new specifications for
incoming raw ginger that required a lower soil content. However, convincing
the suppliers to deliver raw ginger with less soil content was not simple.
The factory divided the suppliers into three groups:
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those who were
neither given any awareness nor incentive programs,
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those who were given a series of awareness
programs, and
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those who were offered with an incentive program.
The Results
The results showed that
the incentive program linked to benefits gained by the company through
better control of ginger quality led to better results than the awareness
programs. The farmers could benefit from improving the quality of their
ginger, lower their operating costs, and improve their productivity as well.
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