Market Readiness Analysis

Short Term
1- Paper
2- IT ( Printers and toners)
3- Detergents
4- Pesticides
Medium Term
5- Lighting
6- Water saving taps
4.1 Survey of Businesses
Several businesses (Appendix I) were thoroughly surveyed with the objective to
learn more about their current status regarding sustainabilty issues, i.e. the range
of sustainable goods and services available within the Lebanese and
international markets. These businesses were selected based upon their
reputation in the Lebanese market. The survey focused primarily on their general
opinion on sustainable development, general information on the market of
sustainable products each within its industry, the company policy implementation,
and finally provide a list of products that are considered sustainable.
The consultant would like to remind all stakeholders at this point that Lebanon
relies heavily on importing raw materials and mainly finished products, therefore
transportation cost and impact on the environment were not considered – even in
the case of local manufacturer of recycled paper for example, they still have to
import raw materials to process and reach the final recycled paper product. In
addition it is worth mentioning that limited local production is available only for
detergents (so far none of the local suppliers has shown interest to shift
production to integrate sustainable raw materials since no demand exists yet in
the marketplace for sustainable products, in addition that a main global player
closed down its powder production capacity of approximately 45,000 tons per
year and shifted it to Syria) and paper products only.
Finally, the consultant exhausted different channels in order to obtain accurate
data with regards to the number of SMEs, names of suppliers, and their
corresponding price list however it seems almost impossible and therefore is
considered as a major limitation to list all the players in the Lebanese market
place however we do acknowledge the few big multinational players. Over and
above at any time the study provided illustrative examples – paper and LED
lighting – it was an indicative percentage of the currently used
products. Another limitation is the fact that the study was unable to
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