All you need to know about the ‘TEST’ Approach — SwitchMed

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All you need to know about the ‘TEST’ Approach

What is TEST?

Over the past three decades, a range of concepts and tools have been developed to help industry to be more sustainable in its production and more efficient in its use of resources. These include pollution prevention, waste minimization, cleaner production, eco-efficiency, and eco-innovation, with a specific focus on waste, energy, and materials. These concepts and tools have the common objective of bringing two seemingly conflicting goals together, financial gain and environmental improvement.

The Transfer of Environmentally Sound Technology (TEST) is the UNIDO programme to harness the full potential of industry’s contribution to Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development. TEST is a skill development programme and an integrated approach aimed at improving competitiveness and environmental performance of the industrial sector. 

The TEST approach goes beyond the traditional “one-stop improvement� or “audit-like� approaches to resource efficiency in the system approach, driving continuous learning and improvement. It builds on:

  • The Resource Efficient and Cleaner Production Assessment (RECPA) methodology, which includes adoption of new eco-efficient technologies;
  • An effective and supportive information system for material and energy flows and related costs based on Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) principles;
  • The core elements of an Environmental Management System (EMS) and an Energy Management System (EnMS) to sustain performance.

 

TEST builds on management of change and addresses not only the operational level of a business, but also the managerial and strategic levels, along the following lines:

  • At the operational level, TEST gives priority to resource efficiency & pollution prevention techniques (RECP) in existing production processes and product design, followed by transfer of cleaner technologies and pollution control solutions (end-of-pipe). Existing processes are optimized by implementing no-cost & low-cost measures with a short pay-back period (PBP), before a portfolio of high investment needing measures is put in place.
  • At the level of management systems, EMS and MFCA tools are used to establish the necessary information management system on relevant material, water, energy and related financial flows in order to link the strategic and operational level of the business. The MFCA reveals to top management the real costs of production, including hidden environmental costs like non-product output costs. The EMS provides procedures and resources to ensure that the outputs of the RECP audit are implemented, sustained and further developed.
  • At the strategic level, TEST places environmental management within the broader strategy of environmental and corporate social responsibilities (CSR) by leading companies towards the adoption of sustainable enterprise strategies.

Download the guidelines to learn more about the TEST methodology:

 

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