Abstract:
The application of Cleaner Production (CP) is an approach in achieving sustainable
development. The research illustrates how CP improves financial performance by
reducing the raw material write off wastage through a case study for a high end apparel
company in Sri Lanka. Though CP application is vastly growing in the world especially
in the European countries, this concept is still emerging in Sri Lanka. Therefore, the
number of empirical studies conducted in reducing the write off waste in Sri Lankan
context are very limited. Herein, this study aims to quantify the resource consumption
(fabric & trims) and write off generation, the environmental impact of the
manufacturing stage, calculate the CP potential and to suggest CP options to reduce the
write off waste per sales order in the selected style. The concept of CP has received
attention as a mean of addressing the depletion of natural resources while increasing
the operational effectiveness of businesses and thereby to boost revenues. Following
the quantitative design method, the data have been collected from primary and
secondary sources. One sales order in the style GAP Tinsel purple bra have been
selected for the study to run the analyses. The universally recognized CP assessment
methodology which has been developed by UNIDO was adopted in the study. An LCA
has been conducted to analyze the environmental impact of write off waste per sales
order. The research identified that there is a total cleaner production potential of LKR
250,000 per sales order. Through the material balance it was identified that 85Kgs of
fabric and 1.6Kgs of trims write off waste is generated per sales order. As per the
normalized results under manufacturing stage, stratospheric ozone depletion is the
highest impacted category by the inputs used in producing the selected product and
mineral resource scarcity is the second major impacted category. From damage
categories, ecosystem is the main damage category impacted from the write off
wastage. Researcher strongly recommends adopting CP options to improve the overall
process steps, to minimize the creation of write off waste and unnecessary costs. As for
the future recommendations, it is suggested to do a cradle to grave LCA analysis as the
results of this study is based on a gate to gate LCA analysis. In Sri Lankan context,
many organizations possess less adequate knowledge in executing CP concept.
Therefore, this study enriches in CP literature.
