En distintas industrias en Chile se realizan esfuerzos para lograr un estándar internacional en tratamiento de residuos, como el rediseño de envases y Several Chilean industries are working towards meeting an international waste treatment standard, which includes redesigning packaging and recycling waste at meat processing plants in the case of the meat industry, and reusing packaging and saving water in the fruit industry.
Public and private environmental initiatives have been in the news this month, following World Environment Day on June 5. These initiatives in the meat and fruit industries are therefore significant. They demonstrate several objectives established by the “Waste Management Act, Extended Producer Responsibility and Promoting Recycling” (known as the REP Law for its name in Spanish), which aims to reduce the generation of waste and promote reuse and recycling.
The REP Law is an economic instrument for managing waste that requires the manufacturers of specific products to organize and finance the management of the waste generated by these products. The Sustainability Manager of the Chilean Meat Exporters’ Association (ChileCarne), Daniela Álvarez, is keeping track of the progress with this standard, and highlights the efforts being made by the meat industry to define an international standard for waste treatment.
Industry initiatives
“White meat producers have always been concerned about treating waste. We have now joined a working group of the Chilean Federation of Industry (Sofofa) along with 16 other trade associations to discuss specific issues regarding product packaging in order to debate the best way to successfully implement the REP Law,” added Ms. Álvarez.
She added: “We have reached a stage where we are rethinking our packaging and redesigning it, to make it more environmentally friendly by using plastics that decompose in water and that are simpler to reuse in the future.”
Another initiative at ChileCarne is involved in reusing waste from meat processing plants. “We are specifically looking at the value of porcine waste.
A few years ago the pork industry began to reuse its waste as fertilizer, but the plan is to go further than this. “We need to generate an added value product that competes directly with fertilizers used by high performance agriculture,” explained Ms. Álvarez.
Source: El Mostrador[:]
