Chemical Leasing and Cleaner Production

On 3 May 2006 in Vienna the Chairman of the Saint Petersburg Committee for External Relations, A. V. Prokhorenko, and the First Deputy Director-General of UNIDO, D. I. Piskunov, agreed to support the Centre's demonstration project on Chemical Leasing at the city's enterprises. On 17 May 2006 the Smolny hosted the seminar “Implementation of Chemical Leasing business models in Russia”.

In autumn 2006 Dr Startsev presented the project at the Russian–Austrian conference on the recycling of hazardous industrial waste and at the working group of the Russian–Austrian commission on trade and economic cooperation at the Ministry of Natural Resources of Russia; the working group included the project in its plan.

Pilot project at the Henkel-ERA joint venture (adhesives production): a Chemical Leasing contract for wastewater treatment, paid by the volume of water treated, was signed in 2007; the cost of treatment fell from RUB 880 to RUB 554.5, and the savings were shared by Henkel-ERA and the service company.

In July 2007 the Centre and Vodokanal concluded a framework agreement on developing cleaner production and introducing Chemical Leasing business models. Vodokanal, which supplies drinking water to more than 4.5 million residents, gave up poisonous liquid chlorine: in 2006, together with Aquatechservice, it switched to a dilute sodium hypochlorite solution, and in 2007 it began producing the solution on site, cutting costs by almost a third. Instead of 5.7 t of liquid chlorine a day, two water stations now receive 640 m³ of 0.8 % hypochlorite solution.

On 31 December 2009 a Chemical Leasing contract was signed, with payment in roubles per cubic metre of treated water. Introducing the model took three years.

Vodokanal's entries (the Southern and Northern water supply stations), prepared and submitted by the Centre, received the UNIDO Global Chemical Leasing Award: at the official ceremony in Prague on 1 March 2010 (ChemCon Europe 2010) both stations received certificates from UNIDO and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management for successful participation in the Case Studies category.

June 2012, Frankfurt am Main: the Global Chemical Leasing Award 2012 Conformity Declaration confirmed that the Vodokanal case meets UNIDO's Chemical Leasing requirements (signed by the UNIDO Director-General, Kandeh Yumkella, and the environment ministers of Austria and Germany).

Under the UNIDO Global Programme the Centre took part in projects for purifying agricultural wastewater of pesticides in Sri Lanka. In June 2010 in Colombo Dr Startsev presented Russia's experience at the meeting of the programme's centres; the partner in the country was the National Cleaner Production Centre of Sri Lanka, which ran a Chemical Leasing pilot in potato growing.

In May 2013 the Centre proposed using the Russian hydrowave method within the Chemical Leasing model: the effluent is purified of pesticides and other chemicals, and payment is per cubic metre of treated water. In September 2013 the model was presented at the UNIDO and UNEP expert meeting in Montreux.