Foreword

Foreword

By: Domingo Jiménez-Beltrán, Executive Director, European Environment Agency

The need for proactive new approaches in environmental management is obvious. Cleaner technology and cleaner production are technologies aiming to be clean, energy-saving and waste-minimising. There is also a need to assess in a life cycle perspective the real improvement of a cleaner technology in quantitative or at least in semi-quantitative terms.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) has the mandate 'to provide the Community and the Member States with objective, reliable and comparable information at the European level'. Among its goals, the EEA shall provide information for environmental policy development and implementation and ensure broad dissemination and accessibility. Important principles in this context are pooling existing information and know-how and facilitating data harmonisation.

This report describes a concept for Comparable Environmental Impact Data on Cleaner Technologies (CEIDOCT). The aim of the concept is to provide a framework for systematic evaluation of cleaner technologies with the use of environmental performance indicators. The concept primarily can be used by industrial sectors and for reporting to environmental authorities, but it also has a wider scope in evaluating products, environmental statements of companies, organisations and local communities.

Case studies from the paper, textile and surface treatment industry demonstrate the usefulness of the concept.

The report is one of the outcomes of the Danish support programme to the EEA. Its production has involved many contributors other than the authors: it has been reviewed by the Scientific Committee of the EEA and the National Focal Points. The EEA is grateful for all these contributions.

The EEA hopes that this publication will encourage wider use of environmental performance indicators and this concept, to make it operational.

Domingo Jiménez-Beltrán
Executive Director
European Environment Agency