ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT QUANTIFICATION AND EVALUATION OF CLEANER PRODUCTION POTENTIAL ON REDUCING MATERIAL WRITE OFF WASTE IN APPAREL INDUSTRY: A CASE STUDY WITH REFERENCE TO A SRI LANKAN APPAREL COMPANY

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.