Cleaner production practices in a medium size gold-plated jewelry company in Brazil: when little changes make the difference

The paper reports the experiences of a medium size gold-plated jewelry company, located in São Paulo – Brazil, in order to reduce waste and pollution. Actions taken for this purpose are described, as well as the key factors affecting progress, the changes that have been introduced, their cost-effectiveness and the additional benefits accomplished. A waste minimization project was carried out to obtain environmental and economic benefits. The first cleaner production (CP) interventions targeting the improvement of the company's environmental performance are also described and related to economic benefits. Local scale performance indicators were employed to evidence the economic and the material savings by kilogram of piece produced. Additionally, savings achieved included 86% reduction in volume of degreasing solution and 36% reduction in electricity consumption. The results are complemented with the use of global scale performance indicators (Material intensity, MIs, and Emergy accounting), which look at upstream impacts and evaluate the environmental performance of the system on the biosphere scale, respectively. Material savings (MIs) account for each matter flow to and from a chain of processes from raw material to the final products, and were calculated in order to estimate the changes avoided in material flows and cycles due to the reduced use of inputs by the company. The total emergy of the savings is used as a quantitative measure of the total environmental support to the flows of energy and matter involved in the process, and is calculated to assess the work of nature spared by the reduced use of materials and energy by the company. Emergy values were converted to currency. Global scale performance indicators have shown that little changes within the company reduce upstream impacts and that benefits to the environment are greater than that observed in the companies neighborhood.