the government published a tender to establish a center for resource efficiency

One of the major challenges facing the industry is the need to be economic and competitive and to meet environmental requirements. For this purpose, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Economy and Industry and the Ministry of Finance, through the Industrial Administration, are publishing a tender for the establishment of a center for resource efficiency, amounting to NIS 51 million for five years.
Over the past decade, Israeli industry has invested billions of shekels annually in investments to meet environmental regulatory requirements. Most of these investments (over 85%) were investments at the end of the pipeline, ie, solutions for treatment of pollution after its creation. Such investments are less than optimal, both environmentally and economically, for the enterprise and the economy.
Globally, and especially in the OECD countries, the opposite trend can be seen in the fact that most of the industry's environmental investments are directed to "original" solutions that prevent the formation of pollution in the first place. These solutions create an added economic value for the plant, due to streamlining, among other things, in production processes, together with an optimal environmental solution that can lead to savings in raw materials, energy and water and lead to clean production.
In order to deal with this problem, centers have been set up in the world, which serve as a professional body of knowledge and an authoritative address for the industry, and operate professional consulting systems to advance the industry toward cleaner production. The center that will be established will be a partner in the worldwide network of centers. Similarly, the center that will be established in Israel will work according to the same model, based on the professional knowledge accumulated in the developed countries. The center will direct the industry in Israel to leverage opportunities for reduction in the source as a means of streamlining and increasing productivity while meeting environmental objectives, while familiarizing itself with the regulations relevant to its areas of activity.
The Center's activity is expected to bring Israeli industry to the forefront of the world's technological know-how and tools in the field of clean production, while encouraging and promoting the assimilation of innovative Israeli technologies in the field. The profit that will be created is double - a reduction in the amount of pollution generated by the industry in Israel, as well as diversion of investments up to NIS 1 billion in the direction of growth and productivity.
The Center for Efficiency in Resources is a central element in the implementation of advanced industrial production processes and as part of a national plan for a circular economy promoted by the Industrial Administration in the Ministry of Economy and Industry, in cooperation with the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
To this are added complementary programs to promote the industry that were recently launched:
• The Institute for Advanced Production will assist the industry to adopt advanced technologies and production methods to increase productivity
• A national pilot to promote industrial symbiosis, which aims to promote trade in waste and by-products in industrial plants, thus saving the economy by reducing costs of waste treatment and saving raw materials, reducing waste, preventing pollution and reducing resource consumption.
• Support for environmental run-offs - Experience shows that developments in innovative environmental techniques tend to fail at the commercialization stage of the technology, in the transition from the R & D stage to the commercial demonstration stage through the assimilation of technology in an industrial facility. The Environmental Protection Authority and the Innovation Authority have launched a program to support budget facilities of NIS 35 million for the years 2018 to 2019. The Ministry of Environmental Protection will also remove regulatory barriers to the operation of these facilities.
• Innovation Lab - The Ministry of Environmental Protection, in cooperation with the Innovation Authority and the Ministry of Economics and Industry, will launch a platform for cooperation between entrepreneurs and manufacturing companies in order to increase the number of projects in the field of environmental technologies.
• Support for R & D (Applied Research and Development) - The Ministry of Environmental Protection in cooperation with the Innovation Authority will grant research grants to researchers and industrial companies whose goal is to promote research in the field of environmental technologies from the basic research stage to proof of feasibility for product development.
These and other activities are designed to jumpstart Israeli industry to the global front and are expected to lead to improved competitiveness of Israeli companies, reduce pollution, increase productivity, improve profitability, improve environmental performance and re-grow the industry.
Senior Deputy Director General for Planning, Policy and Strategy at the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Galit Cohen: "In the past six years, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has been promoting the establishment of the Center for Resource Efficiency. We have learned from the world the best models for operating such a center that will help the industry to become more environmentally efficient and reduce pollution at source, and we have also carried out seven successful pilots in the industry to streamline resources in cooperation with the European Union and the United Nations on this issue. "I am pleased that the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Finance joined the effort, The budget and the resources needed to establish the center, and ultimately it is a project that will benefit the economy and industry in Israel, and therefore the cooperation between the ministries is important and important. "