One Environmental Education Center's Industry Initiative: Collaborating to Create More Environmentally and Economically Sustainable Businesses

The Centre for Environment Education (CEE) added an Industry Initiative to its portfolio of more traditional environmental education programs in 1993. This article documents the start-up and evolution of that program and the ways that businesses and CEE have worked together for a sustainable future. A specific 18-month project, in which CEE and an industry association collaborated to educate participants, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and increase energy efficiency, is highlighted. The project involved 10 individual small- to medium-sized companies from 7 industrial sectors. Using energy audits and analyses of production processes, teams of stakeholders, CEE staff, and outside experts identified opportunities for reductions, estimated the costs, and made technological improvements. The education and community-building among all participants were important components in advancing the goals of the project and sustaining the effort. Funded by a combination of a United Nations Development Program grant and an investment from the firms, this initiative demonstrated the feasibility of eliminating 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide and produced a working model of an environmental education and business sector collaboration. The approach used in this project is being applied by CEE to new situations, and certain components of the approach have also been documented by others in the literature. A new framework demonstrates the way CEE's approach fits under the umbrella of environmental education.