Creating An Eco-Industrial Park

TEDA Special Report—Creating An Eco-Industrial Park
2005-6-10 11:49:38 CRIENGLISH.com

[Audio File]

After 20 years of efforts, Tianjin Economic-Technological Development Area or TEDA has transformed from a salty beach to a modern city. The ecological miracle has enabled TEDA to be one of the top Chinese cities with a high coverage rate of afforestation. The environmental friendly planning also boosts its economic development.
In today's TEDA Special Report, we will tell you how TEDA promotes the idea of ecological economy.

As early as the beginning of the 1980s, TEDA was set up on a saline and alkaline beach besides Bohai Sea in North China. Salt makes up nearly 7 percent of the soil here. Such bad conditions make it hard for any planting. The First Director of TEDA's organizing committee, Zhao Zhaoruo, told reporters that he once sought advice from a Japanese expert on forestation.

"The expert said he had worked in many countries and couldn't think of a place that was infertile. He said he could plant trees and grass here."

However, after testing TEDA's soil samples, the expert said he had never seen such a high percentage of salt and alkali in soil. Conclusion—TEDA is no plant's land.

The expert's conclusion did not make TEDA's pioneers lose their confidence. After many experiments, they managed to plant trees in TEDA and the area becomes greener and greener.

Today, there is a shelterbelt in the east of TEDA. The soil in this belt is a combination of ash, and waste residue from the nearby power generator and chemical factories, as well as sea soil. TEDA's forest park is also built on such waste residue. The 1.5-million-square meter park can effectively help adjust TEDA and its neighboring area's temperature and humidity.

Statistics show that the current coverage rate of afforestation of in TEDA has exceeded 30 percent. It has nearly 8 million square meters' of green land.

TEDA welcomes investment. But not every kind of enterprise can enter TEDA. For heavy polluters, TEDA has a strict policy. Once they can't reach the environmental standards, they won't be allowed to keep their factories here.

Years of efforts in improving its ecological environment have enabled TEDA to become one of the top choices for foreign investors.

Novozymes, a company headquartered in Denmark, is the world's biggest industrial enzyme producer. Several years ago, the company set up Novozymes Biological (China) in TEDA. Its officer in charge of environmental affairs Wang Xuebin had this to say:

"During our production, the primary raw material will be used as cleanly as possible. We all know that Tianjin is in great shortage of water. Having the lowest consumption of water and energy will be our annual goal. We are also making a three or four-year long-term plan to track the consumption of water and energy on each ton of product we make."

Wang Xuebin said the Novozymes processes the residue from the production and makes it into fertilizer without pollution but having a strong disease resistance function. The company gives the residue to the nearby farms for free.

Because of its fast development, TEDA is now encouraging an economic system based on recycling and reducing energy, raw material, and residue during the industrial production.

In TEDA, some waste materials from one factory can become raw material for the others after being processed. For instance, the car factories in TEDA produce large amounts of waste steel. It is then collected by the steel refinery and made into steel ingot. The ingot is made into car parts reused in car factories to make cars.

Now, even rubbish is used to generate electricity. TEDA Environmental Production Company can process 400,000 tons of rubbish and generate 120 million kilowatt hours of electricity, which means it can save 48,000 tons of coal each year.

TEDA is also trying to recycle its wastewater to reuse it in manufacturing and planting. At the moment, the system can recycle 40,000 tons of wastewater and raise the water-recycled rate by 30 percent. The manager of the Tianjin TEDA Sewage Factory spoke to a reporter:

"Our scale may be the biggest in the country by far. Since it started to operate, the system has received positive comments from clients. Some users think it is very convenient to use the recycled water. Above all, it also helps save some costs during the production."

At present, TEDA is stepping up efforts to build up the largest Sea Water Desalination as a long-term plan to provide support for TEDA's sustainable growth.

Our question for today: What is the coverage rate of afforestation in TEDA?

Eco-park lands $5.5 million in funding

Eco-park lands $5.5 million in funding

By Bradley Fehr
bfehr@bowesnet.com
Monday June 13, 2005
Hinton Parklander — The Federation of Canadian Municipalities showed Hinton the money last week to the tune of $5.5 million for one of the town’s pet projects.
Those funds are to be doled out from the federation’s Green Municipalities Fund for the proposed Hinton Eco-Industrial Park.
The $5.5 million, which is split between a $3.3 million grant and a $2.2 million low-interest loan, is a big step forward for the town project.
“They gave it final approval. It’s a done deal,” said an elated Lisa Graul, project manager with the town.
The idea behind the eco-industrial park is to develop pristine green space and allow industrial development of the land without spoilage.
The plan includes a 108-acre industrial park to be developed by the town on land bordered by Hwy. 16 to the south, the CN rail line to the north, Switzer Drive to the east and Hardisty Creek to the west.
Graul said the town is still negotiating with the province to purchase the land for $500,000.
The funding windfall was made known during the FCM’s annual general meeting in St. John’s, NL, held June 4-6.
Some details still need to be worked out and the official status report has not yet gone to council.
Graul’s liaison with the FCM board called to inform her of the good news, but she’s already looking towards the next step.
“We have a lot of work to do to recruit tenants,” she said.
Tenancy, however, is a condition attached to the money. The town must sign on at least three tenants before actually starting development.
To that end, town council recently gave approval for a letter of support for Eastern Slopes Generation to try to obtain feasibility study funding for a co-generation plant. The plant would burn garbage at a very high temperature and use the resulting steam to produce electricity.
The company could possibly supply other park tenants with electricity, provincial regulations permitting.
The town endorsed the grant request, also to the Green Municipalities Fund, because the FCM usually doesn’t provide funding to private businesses. In this case, the town would manage the money for the study on behalf of the company.
Graul said the town is now going to have to pressure the provincial government for the remaining $1.5 million dollars needed for the project.
She said the town could absorb that amount over 10 years, but additional funding would ease the burden.
Hinton is currently surveying the land to make a subdivision, as it is a prerequisite of purchase. She said the town is hoping to sell the land for $150,000 per acre, but still needs a few anchor tenants.
Graul said discussions are ongoing with several companies.
The eco-industrial park is a $10 million investment for the town over the next 10 years. However, the town could stand to receive a 14-15 per cent internal return on investment, plus potentially millions of dollars in future tax revenue.
As for aesthetics, 56 per cent of the park will remained treed.
Phase 1 of the project will include 12 parcels of land developed with specific design guidelines and bylaws to ensure green facilities are built.
“What we’re looking at is alternative methods for dealing with waste water and potable water,” Graul said.

"From jail cells to solar cells"

Or "from the present "gulag" economy to the future "green" economy". Nice comment, indeed.

Excerpt from
Alternative visions
Five Bay Area conservationists are thinking globally – but outside the mainstream consensus – about sustainability
By Matthew Hirsch

Joshua Abraham: Green Jobs, Not Jails

The path to peaceful streets and true community safety is not more prisons but ecologically sound economic development. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights' latest initiative, Reclaim the Future, will help forge public-private partnerships to promote healthy communities.

In the future, we envision eco-industrial parks on land once blighted by brownfields and prisons. We envision nonprofit "solution centers" training young urban workers in new technologies and ancient wisdom. We imagine kids, who are now fodder for prisons, instead creating zero-pollution products. And healing the land. And harvesting the sun. We dream of a day when struggling cities – like Oakland, Watts, Detroit, and Newark – blossom as Silicon Valleys of green capital. We're building a pathway from the present "gulag" economy to the future "green" economy. At U.N. World Environment Day, we are coordinating the social equity track to help ensure the participation of people of color at the eco-summit. In the future, we want to move urban America from jail cells to solar cells.

Stonyfield Institute offers entrepreneurs inspiration, advice

Stonyfield Institute offers entrepreneurs inspiration, advice
By Jeff Feingold
Published: Friday, May. 27, 2005

Launched in 1994, the Stonyfield Farm Entrepreneurial Institute – which will be held June 9-10 at Southern New Hampshire University — was the brainchild of the New Hampshire-based yogurt maker’s chief executive officer, Gary Hirshberg. The goal, he says, was to give entrepreneurs a chance to share with and learn from their peers how to navigate the often dangerous waters of owning a business.

Hirshberg and Michael Swack, dean of the School of Community Economic Development at SNHU – who has been instrumental in relaunching the program — recently discussed the upcoming institute, its target audience and ideas behind its format.

Q. How did you get the idea of starting the institute?

Gary Hirshberg: Stonyfield is a big business success now, but in the first eight years we went through what I call a period of darkness and storms. We weren’t even profitable. That was a period when I wished I could have been exposed to other entrepreneurs, people who could share their practical, day-to-day experience with me. I really suffered from the lack of exposure to other peers or mentors with small to mid-sized business experience.

So after we got through that period of darkness, I never forgot that desire or need.

Q. When did you first launch the program?

GH: We started this in ’94, and since then we have had about 30 of them, in New Hampshire, western Massachusetts, New York and Vancouver. It has evolved into a very practical, hands-on, intimate and safe place for entrepreneurs to get mentoring and get help and advice.

Q: What’s the program like?

GH: We cut to the chase. The best learning is through storytelling. We hear tales from the trenches, how this or that business got through the darkness, what they did when they were faced with a series of bad choices. We exchange a lot of stories and focus on the case study method. We invite participants to present their case or their problem. It’s all grounded, it’s not all theory, it’s not philosophy, just really hard-nosed stuff.

Michael Swack: It’s peer-to-peer learning. At the upcoming institute, we’ll hear from people like Gerardine Ferlins (of Cirtronics) and Howard Brodsky (CCA Global), people who have really grown their businesses, like Gary, from almost nothing to very strong businesses with a strong social mission as part of that. People will be getting together with others who have gone through this before and learn from them.

GH: Businesspeople by definition have their noses ground into the practical reality every minute, and when you hear some guy pontificating about academic theory, that’s a snooze. But when you hear the story about someone like Howard Brodsky and how he succeeded — that’s a page-turner.

Q. How successful has the institute been?

GH: We’ve got a long track record of success, of businesses that have benefited from this approach. We’ve had mergers happen, and people leave and set off in a whole new direction that quintupled their business. We’ve had people leave and go out and find their successor. It’s inspirational.

I get as much out of it as anybody who comes. I never leave without getting a couple of jewels, a couple of nuggets.

Q. You haven’t held one of these events in a few years. What prompted you to start it up again?

MS: For many years we’ve done a number of institutes and been deeply involved in microenterprise lending through the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund.

Gary and I met for lunch a couple of months ago, and we started talking about the institute and both thought it seemed like a really good match to do it again.

Q: What kind of entrepreneur would benefit from taking part?

GH: It’s an applicable approach for anyone in business, actually — real estate offices, developers, service people, accounting firms, manufacturers — anyone who can benefit having a tighter, better connection with your customers and vendors. They can be mom-and-pops, one person and their dog and companies that have a thousand employees, and everything in-between.

Q: There are a lot more pressures on businesses today.

GH: Retailers get much less time to succeed. There’s greater time pressure, greater cost pressure to succeed. All of the costs of being in business — health care, utilities, workers’ comp, liability insurance — are greater than ever.

These are all factors that I would say simply that entrepreneurs who know what they’re up against are, unfortunately, too busy being on a treadmill to do something about.

MS: I also would include non-profit entrepreneurs, who are dealing with the very same issues – how to provide services with the same cost structure Gary’s talking about, medical care, insurance, how to reach markets, cut costs, scale up, the same questions.

Q: What’s causing this kind of pressure?

GH: There are two things going on. The big are getting bigger and advertising is no longer as effective as it once was because consumers, customers are being bombarded by media from every portal. You can get ads on your cell phone or Blackberry.

The answer is, if you have an inherent story to tell, an inherent ability to find and build up on the loyalty to your customer — I don’t care if it’s industrial, consumer or retailer – then you have to find the way to get that message out.

Q: You describe the institute as a “boot camp” for community-minded entrepreneurs. Does that mean it’s for companies that want to emulate Stonyfield?

MS: When we talk about social entrepreneurs, it’s a pretty broad definition.

When you listen to Howard Brodsky, he will tell you he grew up when his parents owned a small pharmacy, and a lot of his parents’ friends owned small pharmacies, and they all went out of business because they couldn’t compete. He was highly motivated by that, and it became his mission, so he developed a really innovative, cooperative business. But you can learn that a number of sectors can benefit from his approach – it doesn’t have to be flooring stores. It can be bicycle stores or tuxedo shops that learn from such a great story.

GH: Every company has a mission. For us, proving that we could profitably support family farmers was our central mission.

But this is not a political orientation at all. We‘re looking for people who want to take advantage of inherent things they’ve got.

My sister and I have worked with developers in this eco-industrial park in Londonderry. There’s obviously enormous competition among industrial parks in southern New Hampshire, and these folks aren’t necessarily progressive, but they understand that doing good for the planet can be a competitive advantage.

Q: So it’s not only for people who are, pardon the expression, do-gooders.

GH: My bias is that the company’s advantage makes the world a cleaner, more peaceful, sustainable place, but it doesn’t have to be that.

This is about finding your competitive advantage. It could be on the revenue side or the cost side — it doesn’t matter where, but everybody’s got it. The mission of this workshop is to discover and capitalize on your competitive advantage.