Green economy
Conference “Green and Resource Efficient Business: Challenges and Practices”
On February 28, 2019 the conference “Green and Resource Efficient Business: Challenges and Practices” took place in Minsk. It was organized by the IPM Business School in partnership with the IPM Research Center and BEROC under the support of the British Embassy in Minsk. Agenda of the event included the international experience in the field of green and circular economy, resource efficient and cleaner production and the results of the circular economy projects implementation in Belarus.
The conference was attended by entrepreneurs, public officials and experts in the field.
The event was officially opened by Ms Lisa Thumwood, Chargè d’Affaires a.i. of the UK to Belarus, Dzrmitry Matusevich, Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Economy of the Republic of Belarus, Pavel Daneyko, IPM CEO.
The international experience in resource efficient and cleaner production was discussed during the first part of the conference.
In his presentation Chris Butters, Researcher at the Center for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, practicing Architect, presented the main differences of circular economy from the linear one, provided the examples of the design stage importance as the key to life cycle products, considered the possibilities of various materials usage in green economy. According to Chris, ‘the manufacturer is the one who knows how the product was put together – so is the best one to recycle it’.
Christina Allen, Lead Programme Manager – Sustainability, British Standard Institution, highlighted the main issues of standards development in the UK with a focus on BS 8001 – Guidance on the principles of circularity.
How to make circular economy happen through resource efficient and cleaner production? This question was addressed by Tatiana Chernyavskaya, International Project Coordinator in the Department of Environment, UNIDO. The expert presented the results of projects implementation in this field under the support of UNIDO in different countries. Tatiana Chernyavskaya believes that ‘circular economy is about systemic approaches in industrial processes and innovation’.
The second part of the conference was devoted to the green economy development in Belarus.
Ekaterina Botyan, Head of Waste Management Department, the Research Center “Ecology” of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of the Republic of Belarus, presented a report on the subject “Waste and secondary resources management”. In particular, Ekaterina gave an assessment of waste generation, use and disposal in Belarus in 2017 in a regional section and discussed the main areas of industrial waste and secondary material resources use in the country.
Dr. Sergei Dorozhko, Professor of the Institute of Business of the Belarusian State University, showed the real situation in resource efficiency at the enterprises of Belarus. The expert says, ‘the enterprises always face the choice and decide which way to take: to work as earlier or to promote cleaner production’.
Talking about financing of green and circular projects, Dr. Nadezhda Batova, Head of the Sector of Ecology of the NASB Institute of Economics, Expert at the Green Economy project, BEROC, finished the second part of the conference. Nadezhda considered in detail the current and potential instruments to finance business projects in the circular economy in Belarus.
