Green Economy report: section Optimizing Products and Processes (incl. Ecological Design)

With a budget of 1,3M USD, the initiative consisted in the following: launch of a facilitating network (reffnet.ch) in June 2014 – Reffnet, which resulted in the improvement of companies' resource-efficiency, reduction of material use, energy and costs. It also resulted in social benefits through improvements in occupational health and safety. Since the launch of Reffnet, more than 7,000 participants have been sensitized to the topic of resource efficiency through presentations of Reffnet at various events. Since 2014, 277 analyses of potential have been carried out in companies. Measures resulting from these analyses were then prepared for 130 companies, and so far, 97 companies have implemented specific measures (as of Summer 2017). Analysis shows that the reduced environmental impact is equivalent to the environmental impact of about 5'000 persons. Furthermore, Reffnet can also support innovation, as it helps initiate innovative projects to increase resource efficiency. Exploratory studies to assess resource efficient processes in production in particular regarding material efficiency, ecological design, and process chains (collaborative business clusters).