PRESOURCE Final Conference “Resource Efficiency in Central European SMEs: Opportunity or Challenge?”
Resource efficiency has become a central topic when evaluating the current state of manufacturing industries. In fact, the former European Commission (2010-2014) had already selected ‘Resource efficient Europe’ as one of the seven Flagship Initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy in order to guarantee sustainable growth. CRIT is already involved in REEMAIN project, which aims to develop and demonstrate a methodology to boost the efficiency of both energy and material resources.
When evaluating the cost structure for European Manufacturing SMEs, Material resources appears to be the most significant cost. In fact, a German study showed how material resources’ more than double human resources’ costs in German Manufacturing SMEs [1][2].
Moreover, the new EU members, most of them in Central Europe, turn out to be the less resource-efficient ones, as it is shown in a recent survey carried out by the EEA [3]. Because of that, a sensible decision is to be made in order to foster Resource Efficiency, which helps achieving greater competitiveness.
However, the main barriers that European companies deal with, specially SMEs, are on the one hand, the unawareness related to their resource consumption, and on the other hand, the lack of financing opportunities to improve resource efficiency in their plants. [3]
PRESOURCE Project, financed by the CENTRAL EUROPE European Union programme, aims to foster Resource Efficiency in European Manufacturing SMEs at diverse levels: by improving in-house capacity, improving knowledge related to risk sharing and SMEs eco-innovation financing, and improving framework conditions that involve actively the related stakeholders.
ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, is one of the participating partners in PRESOURCE. Thanks to their LCA & Ecodesign Laboratory, with headquarters in Bologna, ENEA has helped the PRESOURCE consortium to develop methodologies and tools to promote Life Cycle Assessment and Ecodesign.
PRESOURCE project, which kicked off on June 2012, will host a Final Conference in Berlin the next 12th and 13th November 2014. The Agenda can be consulted here. The participation is free for all interested parties. Registration can be directly be done here.
References:
[1] Institut fur Mittelstandsforschung Bohn (Institute for SME Research Bohn)
[2] Daniel de Graaf, SPIN (Sustainable Production through Innovation in SMEs) Country Report from Germany http://spin-project.eu/downloads/Contryreport_DE.pdf
[3] Presource Project Brochure http://www.presource.eu/presource_flyer_final2.pdf
