An eco-industrial park is an industrial park in which businesses cooperate with each other and with the local community in an attempt to reduce waste and pollution, to share resources, and to help achieve sustainable development, with the intention of increasing economic gains and improving environmental quality.
Interface is the world leader in the design, production and sales of environmentally-responsible modular carpet for commercial, institutional, and residential markets.
Nike’s goal is to make recycling athletic shoes just as common as recycling household waste like plastic, glass, paper and cardboard which has become second nature for many people around the world. Nike operates a sustainable, closed-loop business, which recycles waste from different stages of their operations, from factories to transportation and eventually products at the end of their life, back into new Nike products or as materials for sport’s surfaces.
Brazil is the global leader in aluminium can recycling. Over 10 billion cans were collected in 2006. Recycling saves the country nearly 2000 GWh of electricity annually that would be required to produce new aluminium, which is sufficient to supply a city of over one million inhabitants for one year. Recyling aluminium cans provides employment for about 170,000 people in Brazil, which has some 2,400 small companies and cooperatives involved in recycling and scrap metal trading.
A union in the Indian city of Pune is promoting a socially and ecologically innovative model of waste recovery that has secured concrete benefits for the mainly women waste collectors. There are about 9500 waste collectors in Pune, of whom 90% are women. Over two thirds of these workers are affiliated to the Waste Collectors’ Union KKPKP.
