Construção de indicadores ambientais para o Programa Green Tech Park TECNOSINOS

Abstract

The reduced availability of natural resources and the environmental impacts caused by human activities have brought the need to make adjustments in them. Sustainability therefore needs to be increasingly incorporated into economic activities. The Industrial Ecology and Eco Parks, in this sense, fulfill the task of making the most sustainable economic activities by applying its concepts and tools. This concept search close their production cycles as much as possible, reduce the consumption of materials and energy and reduce waste generation and emissions. The Technological Park of São Leopoldo (TECNOSINOS) seeks to establish guidelines on the area of environmental management of all activities in the park, and the companies that comprise it, breeding and showing all the requirements that must be followed to deploy and maintain system and the environmental management policy. The Eco Park, one of the themes of this study and one of the Industrial Ecology tools can assist the TECNOSINOS to perform these environmental improvements and make it more sustainable. The construction of environmental indicators is required to assess the environmental performance of the park after the implementation of this program and what results were obtained. This dissertation presents a case study in TECNOSINOS and aims to build environmental indicators to assess the program Green Tech Park TECNOSINOS. The methodology of this study comprises applying the Green Tech Park Program’s checklist and survey of Environmental Maturity Levels of companies on two occasions (2013 and 2014) and assessment of the environmental gains made during the period. Next, it was conducted a survey of environmental aspects and impacts and an environmental assessment of the companies. During the year of 2014, it was also carried out the implementation of 10 environmental indicators in 15 companies in TECNOSINOS and an analysis of the results was made. It was identified that 86% of companies are in the Environmental Maturity Level I, 10% at Level II and 4% at Level III. Improvements were suggested for TECNOSINOS on two levels: firm level and inter-firm level. Environmental indicators applied in 15 selected companies showed that it is necessary to perform various actions of environmental management at the park's companies to raise the Environmental Maturity Levels. The performance criteria that need to be improved are Management, Investments, External Actions and Partnerships. The environmental indicators used identified important gains in at least 3 companies where environmental management actions have been implemented. It can be concluded that the TECNOSINOS is consolidating with an Eco Park type 3 regarding business organization and also, an Eco Park of Integrated Environmental Management System about the type of performed exchanges.