The Central Environmental Authority (CEA) of Sri Lanka is to launch a new National Green Award to recognize the environmental services rendered by production and technical firms in the country.
The National Green Awards organized under the Environment Ministry would be the country’s main environmental award from this year, which encourages local companies to be more concerned on this area, CEA Chairman Charitha Herath told the ‘Sunday Island’.
The awards ceremony of the Presidential Environmental Green Awards 2011 will be held on August 23 at the BMICH under the patronage of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
He said this awards ceremony will be organized to coincide with the CEA’s 30th Anniversary.
Apart from the awards, the CEA has also organized a special seminar for environmental entrepreneurs, an environmental souvenir, an island-wide public awareness programme and special media programmes.
There will be over 25 awards covering 10 industrial sectors such as health, apparel, food, mineral and many more will be participating in this competition, which enables them to promote sustainable development for the country, Herath said.
CEA Chairman also said that existing regulatory systems are not sufficient to protect and enhance the quality of the environment to ensure it’s sustainability.
The National Green Awards will encourage businesses to go beyond compliances to protect the environment giving more knowledge to them on green industries. It will also help to recognize their products locally and internationally, he said.
This awards scheme will be an alternative system to control pollution and greening the environment other than existing command and control approaches and education and awareness programmes, he noted.
"Therefore this awards scheme will influence people in a positive way to adopt a self-made environmental policy within the institution to apply for the high productivity in Sri Lanka enhancing the environmental sustainability", he said.
"The industrial community has intra business competition to win shrinking markets and trying to find new avenues of products to the market. The CEA will use this competition mainly to control industrial pollution for greening industries and finally end with a green environment," Herath said.
Referring to the expected outcomes, he said granting government recognition to industries with advanced environmental practices, development and adoption of novel strategy, enhancing environmental consensus of the industrialists are some of them.
The CEA was established in 1981 for the purpose of implementing the regulatory and educational functions to protect the environment in the country. During the last 30 years, the CEA has done many activities to protect and preserve the environment.
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