NCPC’s conference and awards ceremony is relevant to the environmental matter at hand

by Sanath Nanayakkare

National Cleaner Production Centre (NCPC) Sri Lanka will hold its 2nd ‘International Conference at a time a huge number of environmental events draw the world’s attention to saving the planet Earth,

Several international speakers from renowned international organisations in the field, will share their insights at the conference titled, ‘Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy’, which will be held at the Waters Edge on 19th January 2022,

The audience of the forum will mainly comprise key personalities of the Sri Lankan corporate sector where more than 100 senior public sector officials, senior and middle-level managers will also take part.

NCPC Awards 2021 will also be held back-to- back with the 2nd International Conference on Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy.

The event is recognised as the pioneer environmental awards programme in Sri Lanka which is reputed for its impartial and comprehensive evaluation process in selecting the winners under different awards categories.

The one-day international conference will have the thematic session in the morning where renowned scholar Dr Rene Van Berkel, Head of UNIDO operations in South Asian Region will make the keynote presentation.

Dr Malini Balakrishnan from The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), India Rajas Badra from Stenum Asia and Dr.Carl Vadenbo, Project Manager from Ecoinvent, will be among other main presenters at the conference.

NCPC was founded by United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) in 2002, on the request of the government of Sri Lanka.

Gamini Gunasekera, Chairman of NCPC told the media that Exporters of Sri Lanka (NCE), as stakeholders will represent the entire industrial export sector at the international conference.

Dr. Anil Jasinghe said that the key strategy adopted by UNIDO and United Nations

Environmental Programme (UNEP) to promote resource efficiency and cleaner production to the developing world was setting up of the National Cleaner production Centres and continuously developing the capacity and technical knowhow of such centres to support national and local governments as well as industries and businesses.

The government of Sri Lanka, particularly the Ministry of Industries and the Ministry of Environment as the national focal points for UNIDO and UNEP respectively, worked collaboratively to set up one of the centres in Sri Lanka, among the 50 plus centres set up under the Global programme. In this context, this conference and awards ceremony will be highly relevant.”

NCPC also provides many technical services to companies to improve their environmental performance. Those services include cleaner production assessments, energy audits, water audits, chemicals and safety audits, carbon footprint, water footprint etc.

In addition to that, they support industries to develop financial appraisal reports for access of finance for environment-friendly investments.

National Cleaner Production Awards scheme is another tool that NCPC has initiated with the objective of promoting Cleaner Production practices in the country. The body is also working with advanced environmental management tools such as Life Cycle assessment which are new to Sri Lanka.

Under UNIDO-UNEP Global Cleaner Production programme, NCPCs all over the world promote Resource Efficiency and Cleaner Production for industries and businesses.

The upcoming event on 19th January 2022 is widely expected to create a positive impact on all stakeholders as they are highly likely to benefit from international knowledge and updates on Resource Efficiency and Circular Economy.

Notably, NCPC supports industries to develop financial appraisal reports, empowering them with potential access to finance for green investments.