Research On Comprehensive Assessment Method Of Cleaner Production Benefit

The conception of constructing a resource-economizing and environment-friendly society to a sustainable development way has impregnated into many fields of natural science and social science. Sustainable development indicates a development that can satisfy the demands of our offspring as well as can meet our present needs. It has evolved as a develop model which is currently accepted and turned into a significant sign of human society civilization and the common target.In days gone by, the key point of pollution abatement was put on the ending treatment, which means if we want to inhibit the worsen tendency, we have to increase the money invested, develop various pollution treatment technology and sophisticated equipment, set up pollution control measures, and dispose all classes of pollutants during manufacture. Such traditional ending treatment model resulted in wasting of resources, high expense, hard to manage and high risk of contamination. It’s difficult to achieve the unification of economic benefit, social benefit and environmental benefit. Also the sustainable developing strategy is difficult to carry out.Companies have often introduced processes without considering their environmental impact. They have argued that a tradeoff is required between economic growth and the environment, and that some level of pollution must be accepted if reasonable rates of economic growth are to be achieved. This argument was no longer valid, and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, established new goals for the world community that advocate environmentally sustainable development. Cleaner production can contribute to sustainable development, as endorsed by Agenda 21. Cleaner production can reduce or eliminate the need to trade off environmental protection against economic growth, occupational safety against productivity, and consumer safety against competition in international markets. Setting goals across a range of sustainability issues leads to ’win-win’ situations that benefit everyone.Cleaner production is defined as the continuous application of an integrated preventive environmental strategy applied to processes, products and services to increase overall efficiency and reduce risks to humans and the environment. For production processes, Cleaner production involves the conservation of raw materials and energy, the elimination of toxic raw materials, and the reduction in the quantities and toxicity of wastes and emissions. For product development and design, Cleaner production involves the reduction of negative impacts throughout the life cycle of the product:from raw material extraction to ultimate disposal. For service industries, Cleaner Production involves the incorporation of environmental considerations into the design and delivery of services. Cleaner production can be and has already been applied to raw material extraction, manufacturing, agriculture, fisheries, transportation, tourism, hospitals, energy generation and information systems. It is important to stress that cleaner production is about attitudinal as well as technological change. In many cases, the most significant cleaner production benefits can be gained through lateral thinking, without adopting technological solutions. A change in attitude on the part of company directors, managers and employees is crucial to gaining the most from cleaner production.When cleaner Production and pollution control options are carefully evaluated and compared, the cleaner production options are often more cost effective overall. The initial investment for Cleaner Production options and for installing pollution control technologies may be similar, but the ongoing costs of pollution control will generally be greater than for Cleaner Production. Furthermore, the Cleaner Production option will generate savings through reduced costs for raw materials, energy, waste treatment and regulatory compliance. The environmental benefits of Cleaner Production can be translated into market opportunities for greener products. Companies that factor environmental considerations into the design stage of a product will be well placed to benefit from the marketing advantages of any future ecolabelling schemes.Moreover Cleaner Production must be considered to be an integral part of national strategy to establish a circular economy, whose framework conditions will be stipulated in a law that is currently being prepared at the national level. Despite these proactive policies, every country faces significant challenges in effecting extensive and sustainable changes to industrial activities and environmental protection practices. These challenges include the establishment of an adequate institutional framework, which is still being built, a basic lack of awareness capacity and resources among enterprises, and the difficulty in creating a market for Cleaner Production services. Developments in chinese political and economic conditions demand the widespread adoption of Cleaner Production practices and offer opportunities to improve the pursuit of Cleaner Production. Increasing pressure from the general public through the media and citizens’protests on the one hand, and ever tougher implementation and enforcement by provincial and local governments on the other hand, create a situation in China, in which greener production has considerable competitive advantages. Additionally, pressure on Chinese exporters and suppliers from multinational companies as well as on joint-venture partners to comply with the requirements of environmentally conscious customers in industrialized countries, have led to an improvement of the environmental performance of Chinese industries. Thus, external pressures requiring improved environmental performance and product quality are contributing to a growing demand for environmental management services and of complementary tools and approaches, such as life cycle analysis, green design and health and safety measures.The key of cleaner production is how to assess or predict the economic, environmental and social benefit of cleaner production by using optimal methods. And comprehensive assessment method of cleaner production benefit is not a normal method to put into practice, little experts took time to do it. In the following, based on cleaner production assessment home and abroad, to settle the matter of overfull indicators and subjective assessment and so on, the assessment method and the whole process were discussed. The aim was to propose a methodology to assist in developing and optimizing cleaner production processes, and to promote continuering cleaner production.The first part of this thesis gave the opinion that cleaner production, a whole set of sustainable development stratage, was accepted by all of the countries and widely applicable. The main idea was prevent first, process control, and source cut. The second part focused on the indicator system. Cleaner production assessment indicator system, the important ring of cleaner production auditing, was regarded as the impersonal criterion to choose appropriate technique program. Assessment indicator system was the sign of management science and the yardstick of quantitative analysis. When to select the indicator, the following principles should be obeyed:life cycle analysis; pollution prevention; easily quantitative; handy data; space time rule; impersonal veracity; simple and integrative assessment; clear connotation and maneuverability.It was the first time to assess the economic, environmental and social benefit of cleaner production with only one indicator system, used in this thesis was divided into three classes. The first-class included 3 aspects:environmental benefit, economic benefit and social benefit. The second-class included 14 aspects:technology and equipment, utilization of resource and energy, product, pollutant emission (before treatment), waste reuse demand, environmental management demand, economic scale, economic generator, economic advance, policy consistent, social economy, social environment, sustainable development and other aspect. The third-class includes 58 aspects, and 30 of them were quantificational indicators,28 of them were qualitative indicators. Each indicator was divided into four ranks as international advanced level, domestic advanced level, domestic ordinary level and unknown level of chosen enterprise.The third part compared cleaner production with environment impact assessment, cleaner production auditing, and life cycle assessment. It came to the result that assessment method matching to indicator system could make cleaner production assessment go on wheels.The forth part was the most important that the comprehensive assessment method of cleaner production benefit, established with rough set theory, entropy theory, analytic hierarchy process, and fuzzy mathematics, was the first time to have application in cleaner production benefit evaluation. The assessment not only provided a set of systematical methods on cleaner production improving its research methodology, but also provided help for enterprise practice, and it was the first timeThe integration of subjective evaluate and impersonal evaluate was significant to conform weight of indicators. Subjective weight of indicator was conformed by analytic hierarchy process, which was widely used in value assignment, and impersonal weight was conformed by rough set theory and entropy theory, which were newly used in value assignment. The integration weight was formed with rough set theory and information entropy theory.Qualitative indicator might change to be quantized with discretization and rough set theory, and numerical solution of benefit assessment might come true with relative deviation fuzzy matrix. So it was the first time that the whole assessment process was quantized in cleaner production benefit assessment.A simple system of chinese petroleum processing industry was described as a case study to illustrate the proposed methodology in the fifth part. As the work was done in close co-operation with the local producer, it was possible to obtain a large amount of site-specific inventory data. And it was also the first time to realize the society benefit assessmet of cleaner production.The proposed method allowed overall evaluation of risk resulting from the process and products, quantitative analysis of environmental loading related to material and energy flows used in the process as well to flows of environmental unfriendly products and wastes, recovery of secondary materials from wastes and recycling to be taken into account, consumption of raw materials and use of energy recovered in the process to be considered, flows of industrial wastes (solid, liquid and gaseous) to be taken into account, flows of manufactured environmentally noxious products to be included in the assessment.The results showed that comprehensive assessment method coule be easily employed to evaluate cleaner production level, and had a wider applicability and relevance to implement cleaner production as well to perform comparative analyses of other industries.