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ABSTRACT: The extraction of sea salt depends on the occupation of large areas at the estuary banks, many of them inserted in Permanent Preservation Areas (PPAs). Thus, the objective was to evaluate the economic viability of Environmental Offsets (EO) as an alternative to the unoccupied PPAs in the saltworks. In order to do so, 27 solar saltworks installed in the region of the Brazilian White Coast were evaluated for the occupation of PPAs - measured using images from satellite, georeferenced, vectored with corresponding PPA bands generated - and estimated to EO (Impact Degree x Sum of the investments necessary to implement the project) and Economic Impact (Net Present Value, with long-term interest rate of 7%) of vacating PPAs. It was considered that EO was feasible whenever the costs resulting from it were lower than the economic impact caused by the vacancy of the PPAs. The PPAs were tthe productive area of the saltworksthat occupied 13.70% of PPAs. For all the evaluated enterprises the value corresponding to EO was lower than the Economic Impact resulting from the vacancy of the PPAs. Thus, EO is an economically viable and more attractive alternative to the eviction of PPAs by the saltworks industry and may also provide environmental gains due to the financing of conservation units in the areas of influence of the enterprises. However, there is a need to improve the methodology used to estimate the EO, since a maximum limit is set, the environmental impacts caused by the projects are underestimated.

This research had the goal of identifying the environmental requirements incorporated in furniture clusters and the internal and external factors for the use of those requirements in the product development process. Eighteen micro and small companies from the furniture hub of Itatiba (a city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo) were analyzed according to their adopting environmental requirements in the products life cycle as well as in the PDP (product development process) of custom orders. The data were collected through partly open interviews and on site visitations, by analyzing each activity in the PDP and the environmental requirements linked to them, identifying the people responsible for each activity and, in the end, identifying the factors that motivated the adoption of those requirements. The results show that economic factors still rule the way in which the companies respond to environmental issues, neither by adaption to the laws and regulations or by reducing the production costs. Moreover, the lack of capable professionals in the area of developing sustainable products contributes for making it more difficult to structure the sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]