Before joining the cleaner production component in the industry (CPI), during the production process, Ngoc Lap tea factory used to encounter major environmental problems such as high concentration of dust, noise pollution, and smoke from burning coal, which directly affected the working conditions of employees, worsen living condition in the neighborhoods and schools near the factory. The amount of carbon dioxide emission from the plant is about 2,500 tons per year.

Upon realizing the benefits from cleaner production activities, in order to thoroughly solve the environmental issue during production process, in 2007, with supports from the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Center for clean production of Vietnam, the factory decided to implement measures for cleaner production.

During the first phase of the project (from May to October 2007), the factory had started to establish a team for cleaner production to begin evaluating the production procedure in the entire plant. After that, a series of low cost or no cost measures were performed throughout the factory.

 In more details, before carrying out the cleaner production project, tea spilling during the stage of preliminary treatment and tea particles flying during stage of finished product treatment used to be common situations, leading to a waste of material. It is calculated that each year the factory could not reclaim about 82 tons of fresh tea due to various reasons such as: damaged factory’s floor; impurities in tea, tea was splattered in different stages of production. Besides, the factory also suffered from power leakage because some of its current engines were wrapped up causing overheating, most its lighting bulbs were of high capacity.

At the same time, the amount of coal consumed during production was also very large due to poor kiln operating techniques of workers; overheated air flowing channels and devices’ shells (having surface temperature from 60 to 75 degrees Celsius).

Aware of those problems, the team for cleaner production began using different methods of internal management in order to reduce raw material loss including: improving awareness of workers in operation, restoring the workshop’s floor, finishing maintenance jobs, fixing the oil leakage problem, mounting screens to cover open devices to ensure hygiene, cleaning up and gather tea thoroughly. Along with gathering up raw material, the factory also proposed solutions for reducing electricity consumption such as performing a gradual replacement of fluorescent light bulbs with compact lighting bulbs, turning off machines whenever they are not used, having a specific operation procedure for each type of machine.

 Also, to reduce the coal consumption, the plant has assigned responsibility for quality control of coal for furnace workers; improving furnace operating skills for workers; repairing the shells of thermal devices. With the total investment of up to VND28.5 million, after a year of execution, the total amount the plant had saved was VND486 million per year; and of 30 tons of dust 275 tons of carbon dioxide in emissions was reduced in one year.

The year 2008 marked the beginning of phase 2 of the project. Ngoc Lap Tea factory started to carry out measures which need larger investment to minimize the amount of dust, reduce raw material loss during production. The plant installed a dust filtering system for food, specially designed to reduce tea dust; another system to provide clean air for drying part. The heat supplying system for workshops and warehouse was also upgraded.

 The total investment for those two measures was 2.203 billion dong. After one year, the factory gained a profit of 403 million dong, and at once reduced the amount of dust released into the environment by 50 tons per year, cut down 550 tons of carbon dioxide emission per year. “The larger benefits that the factory has brought, however, are creating a cleaner environment, improving working condition of workers, thus increasing productivity and products’ quality” – said Mr. Nga.

With those considerable benefits from the cleaner production process, Ngoc Lap Tea Factory has decided to maintain the activity after the cleaner production components have ended by maintaining the cleaner production team's activities and the integration of cleaner production activities onto the plant’s producing activities. Accordingly, in the future, many other cleaner solutions will continue to be deployed such as insulation of hot air flowing channels; management of water consumption, sealing the fermentation room to improve product quality; improving working conditions  for the workers.

By Nguyen An