Workshop 3 of Eco-Bonus and Eco-Focus companies, introduces to participants ways of efficient and safe work with hazardous materials, how to analyse their energy consumption and of course, also the ways to preserve energy which inevitably leads to money savings. Another wide sphere which is discussed during workshop is waste management and benefits of its implementation to company policy.
Workshop opens with the topic of ecological purchasing . Eco-purchasing is based on idea that you go through your purchasing chain from the end to its start and identify items and materials which usage isn’t efficient enough and also Eco-friendly.. As an example we can use packaging of some consumer goods. Package can be unnecessarily big, which means unnecessary amount of material has been used. If we lessen the amount of material used for packaging, we save money and also reduce waste. Another way to approach Eco-purchasing is to use recyclable materials in every step of production. This is just a slight insight to what Eco-purchasing actually is and what it offers to company but there is no doubt it’s a good thing.
Eco-Purchasing also serves as an appetizer before presenters proceed to three main topics of this workshop – hazardous materials, waste management and energy analysis and conservation.
Hazardous materials are those that can harm not only people, but also their property and environment. They can be in liquid, solid or gas state and usually it is their material characteristics which are dangerous. And if we cannot avoid using these items, at least we need to know how to label them, store, we have to be aware of workers safety and also of legal compliance connected with them so we can avoid potential fees. And so these are facts participants are getting familiar with during this workshop topic. They also learn how to work with Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) during practical exercise. MSDS gives complete info of the chemical including, but not limited to, safety precautions, first aid, toxicity, handling and storage. It also gives legal information needed before and after using the chemical. During this exercise, participants are divided into mixed groups, so not only they learn something new, but also meet new people from different companies and branches which leads not only to sharing useful information among them but also to possible bench-marking.
Our ECOSWITCH presenter like to start the topic of waste management with one simple sentence: „Waste management is more than simply arranging containers in the company…“ Participants are a bit surprised by this at the start, but during the session they learn to understand that idea of waste management is much more than for example recycling. ECOSWITCH lead them to grasp an idea of 3Rs – reducing, reusing and recycling of waste, teach them the whole process of waste management and what is the most important – real life examples from companies are shown. Which means partaker can not only hear the theory, but he also sees how exactly it works and how much savings proper waste management can bring to the company and to the environment.
The biggest time of this whole-day workshop is devoted to talking about energy, its conservation, analysis of its flow in company and successful management. Again all these activities aimed to make company savings. Presenters explain and show how to keep track on energy consumption in company which again brings new options on how to save energy, and inevitably energy costs. Important part of this session are also practical examples of items, e.g. cooling machines, isolation on pipes, which are often causes of energy losses and so how to prevent these losses.
After the theory, it’s important to try it by yourself. That’s why as a closing exercise for workshop and the most interesting part is the exercise on energy management. Participants are faced with a task of analyzing and optimizing the production of certain item where they utilize gained knowledge during previous session and obtain practical and first-hand view into the topic. Since this is also a bit of competition among the teams for chocolates, everybody tries their best 
Third workshop, like all other ECOSWITCH workshops, was indeed busy, all participants gained experience which is worth the spent time and energy.
Written by:
Veronika Mahladova
Juvy Stummer
Original post from GPIos/Ecoswitch-ph
Posted on April 19, 2013 in Ecoswitch Updates by Jill Padua