Speeding up cleaner production in China through the improvement of cleaner production audit

The increasing pressure to save energy and reduce pollutants prompted China to conduct a cleaner production audit in the 1990s. However, the cleaner production audit procedure has a significant fault that may mislead audit emphasis and reduce the effectiveness of cleaner production in China. The current study proposes an explicit approach that involves the comparison of the obtained audit emphasis and the existing approach for test scenarios. The environmental and economic improvement potentials estimated using existing approach were lower than that using new approach at approximately 26% and 31%, respectively. This estimation indicates that the existing cleaner production audit procedure has significant subjective influence on the entire cleaner production audit and may significantly mitigate the effectiveness of cleaner production in China. Accordingly, updating the cleaner production audit procedure is highly recommended for improving cleaner production in China.