NISP lead support for Chinese industry

Representatives from The National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) are heading to China this August, to lead a Defra funded Sustainable Development Dialogue pilot project. It will be the second of six visits planned throughout the next two years, whereby NISP will implement a pilot circular economy project in the Yunnan Province, in a bid to help China develop long-term resource efficiency and sustainable economic growth.

NISP has been incredibly successful in helping UK businesses save money and lessen their environmental impact, by setting up commercial trading of by-products such as energy, water and waste materials between companies from different industrial sectors.

In this way, since April 2005, NISP has diverted 1.7 million tonnes of waste from landfill, reduced CO2 emissions by over 2 million tones and avoided the use of 4.4 million tonnes of virgin materials. At the same time it has made cost savings of £70 million and generated £100 million in additional sales for industry, attracted £66 million in private investment in reprocessing and recycling, and created 486 jobs whilst saving 766 others.

And now NISP has become the first industrial symbiosis initiative in the world to be launched on a national scale, as it leads UK support to Chinese industry, alongside the Environment Agency and Envirowise. Paul Knuckle, Commercial Manager of NISP, said: "In time, NISP will work directly with Chinese industry by influencing the upstream side of sustainable production and consumption and bringing together companies and organisations of all sectors and sizes. There exists tremendous opportunities in China at the moment and industrial symbiosis is the perfect vehicle for making them real."

The China pilot programme is one in a series of new innovative partnerships that the UK is establishing with leading emerging powers, in a bid to improve follow-up of international commitments, whilst recognising that no single nation can address the challenges of sustainable development alone.

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