has been the development of the Cleaner Production Agreements
(APL, in Spanish), which are voluntary agreements (Chidiak, 2002)
between private companies within the same production sector and
the public bodies with jurisdiction in the matter of the Agreement,
aiming to implement cleaner production through specific objectives
and actions.
The APL has been established as an instrument to promote
productive and environmental enhancement, as it promotes better
coordination between various agencies of the State Administration
responsible for policy formulation on environmental and health
matters (Jimenez, 2007). Industries completing their APL obtain
a Cleaner Production Certificate, which is issued after an independent
audit, as well as a verification process by the national and
regional authorities, are carried out. It is important to mention that
this Cleaner Production Certificate is issued for a period of four
years, after which companies and industrial sectors are compelled
to renew their certificates by carrying out further APLs that aim to
increase cleaner production objectives.
Several meetings were conducted between ASIPES and the
cleaner production secretary for the Biobio region, in order to
establish the first APL in the region, which was finally signed in
2005. The goal of this paper is to present the achievements
resulting from the implementation of the cleaner production
strategy in Chile, specifically in the frozen fish processing industry.