Indian metalworkers lowering their resource and energy consumption by up to 50 per cent

Metal finishing can be made more environmentally friendly – this has been demonstrated by more than 100 Indian companies. Participants in the ACIDLOOP project presented their findings on 17 and 18 December 2015 in Delhi, discussing new potential sources of resource efficiency.  

Acid recovery and sewage treatment are key to resource-efficient metalworking and refinement. This insight is the product of the four-year ACIDLOOP project, which has helped more than 100 small and medium sized enterprises in making their operations more environmentally friendly. As the project closed, participants presented their successes in Delhi on 17 and 18 December. On average, companies were able to lower their consumption of water, raw materials and energy by an average of 22 per cent, with some companies even achieving savings of more than 50 per cent.  

Pushing resource efficiency further – even beyond ACIDLOOP efforts

As part of the ACIDLOOP closing conference, 120 participants – from economic, political and civil society backgrounds – discussed how findings and experiences from the project can continue to spur improvements to resource efficiency in this industrial sector even after the project comes to a close. A particular emphasis was put on the need to strengthen knowledge transfer on identifying efficiency potentials and their uses. Just how such knowledge transfer can take place was shown by the ACIDLOOP project. At the accompanying trade fair, companies presented various technologies that can be put into use towards minimising resource consumption.

On the basis of project experiences, there are plans to transfer the measures developed during the ACIDLOOP project to other countries and companies in the sector in South Asia. ACIDLOOP project partners Stenum Asia and TERI are taking the initial steps in this direction by continuing after the conclusion of the project to offer their consultancy services to companies who wish to reduce their resource consumption. adelphi and other project partners will meanwhile continue to push on with the METABUILD project in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. METABUILD is likewise funded via the SWITCH-Asia Programme and is intended to enhance the resource efficiency of metalworking companies in local construction industries.

ACIDLOOP was funded by the European Union as part of the SWITCH-Asia Programme. adelphi’s principal role consisted of establishing dialogue with and between various stakeholder groups and communicating project progress and findings accordingly. More information can be found on the ACIDLOOP website: www.acidloop.in.