Paper Workshop 5: strategies to increase resource use efficiency in industrial and agricultural sectors.

Title: Effectiveness of cleaner production on water resources contamination control. Autor(s): Name: A.Jaramillo*, P. Vsquez*, P. Osorio**, I. Restrepo***, Address: Cra 56 # 11-36 Cali - Colombia e-mails: anadorly90@yahoo.com , chauxpaola@yahoo.com , inrestre@univalle.edu.co * Regional Center for Cleaner Production, RCCP. Cali, Colombia. ** Corporacin Autnoma Regional del valle del cauca (CVC) ** Instituto Cinara, Universidad del Valle, Instituto de Investigacin y Desarrollo en Agua Potable, Saneamiento Ambiental y Conservacin del Recurso Hdrico. Cali, Colombia. Key Words: Cleaner production (CP), participatory action research, tanneries, industrial effluents, water contamination. Tanneries in the municipality of El Cerrito are traditional industries, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with economic importance for the region due to their intensive use of labor and exporting potential. At the same time, they are characterized by a low productivity, raw material of low quality, technological obsolescence and high negative impacts to the environment. Great part of this contamination comes from the uncontrolled use of resources and raw materials in productive processes. This entails to industrial effluents without treatment with high levels of BOD, QOD, total suspended solids with chromium and sulfide in high concentrations, among others. These effluents contaminate the Cerrito River, affecting the population health and the quality of the water that is used downstream for agricultural activities like sugar cane irrigation. There is also contamination by industrial and dangerous solid wastes like cuts of semi-processed and finished leather with high content of chromium and other substances, which sometimes are disposed into the water bodies or on the ground where leachate infiltrates, affecting groundwater near to the surface. On the other hand, the environmental authority of the region, CVC, will initiate the construction of the wastewater treatment plant of the municipality, to which the tanneries will be connected, once these industries implement CP actions. It is expected that the tanneries will not affect the biological system that has been considered for the treatment plant (biological ponds). In order to help the tanneries to improve their environmental performance, CVC supported the Regional Center for Cleaner Production (RCCP) in the project "Cleaner Production in the tanneries of El Cerrito", to propose and implement actions of CP in the processes and COLCIENCIAS, the national institution of science and technology, funded a project between the Center for Leather Productivity (CPD), RCCP, University of Valle and the leather chain. Both projects have been developed in light of principles and methods based on participatory action research that assure that the problems are analyzed by the involved actors and solutions are a consensus result. The actors have adapted the methodology and participated in the spaces of agreement where the entrepreneurs have played a central role.

This methodology has allowed to create a confidence base that has made possible the participation of the totality of the tanneries of El Cerrito (21 companies) in the CP projects, which had not been possible in previous interventions. In addition, the ice between the CVC and the entrepreneurs was broken and new agreements were reached around the environmental normativity. According to this, the entrepreneurs committed themselves to fulfill specific CP aspects of short, medium and long term that were analyzed in the consensus spaces. The solutions implemented in the first project (short term) showed the reduction of water consumption in the processes as well as reductions in BOD and TSS, mainly. It was observed a reduction of 47% in BOD5 and 64% in SST. BOD and TSS reductions are due to sludge recovery by the pre-treatment systems that complemented the CP actions. At collective level, this recovery was estimated in 14,000 kg/week, approximately. Also, at individual level, the short term implementations reduced the amount of chromium in sludge as a result of CP actions. The processes were improved by the separation of the effluent lines allowing handling in an independent way the effluents with chromium, with sulfides and those that only contained organic matter. This gave the opportunity to reuse or take some advantage of sludge without chromium. In conclusion, these projects have demonstrated that based in a participatory process, CP actions can be introduced with very positive results for the environment, the private sector and the region in general. At present, the environmental authority (CVC), the entrepreneurs, the CRPML and the other actors are developing the CP project funded by COLCIENCIAS that will give continuity to the first one. This project has as final objective to increase the competitiveness of these SMEs through the environmental improvement, considering that in the next years, Colombia will be facing strong competitors due to the Free Trade Agreement.