Evaluation of the environmental impacts of a Cleaner Production Agreement by frozen fish facilities in the Biobío Region, Chile

The six biggest frozen fish processing companies in Chile signed a Cleaner Production Agreement with the Regional Cleaner Production Secretary, supported by several public institutions related to health, labor risk, and environment. The overall objective of the Agreement was the incorporation of cleaner production measures for frozen fish installations in order to increase production efficiency, to reduce pollution at source, to improve the management of industrial liquid and solid waste, as well as to incorporate upgrading and recycling measures. The implementation phase took two years, in which three audits were carried out, whose results are analyzed in this work. The most important achievements of the implemented measures were the reduction of water consumption (28%), solid waste generation (40%) and energy consumption (24%). Especially important was the implementation of sound management systems that encouraged employee participation, which had a strong effect on diminishing the accident rates of all partner companies (18%) during the study period. Finally, after establishing the basis of quality standards in the processing facilities, it is suggested that the forthcoming renewal Agreements should include further improvements such as incorporating more steps of the products value chain, following a lifecycle approach (e.g. fishing, packaging, transport), into the sectorial evaluation.

► We assessed six companies that carried out a Cleaner Production Agreement. ► The assessment used social, environmental, and economic indicators. ► All indicators were evaluated before and after the APL implementation. ► Reductions of 18–90% (average of 43%) were achieved for all indicators. ► An important aspect was the involvement of public-private partnerships.