SUSTAINABILITY AS A FRAMEWORK, APPROACH, AND COMMITMENT

Companies play a critical role in achieving sustainable development and addressing challenges, such as climate change, the exploitation of natural and non-renewable resources, and the impact of humanity on our environment and ecosystem. Sustainability divisions in corporates help enable companies to achieve sustainability targets and reduce their environmental impacts. Hitesh Kataria, Manager in the Group Sustainability division of the Mahindra Group, in conversation with TCA Avni for Energy Future talks about the efforts taken by the Group to utilize waste, tackle carbon emissions, and reduce energy consumption.

Mahindra aims to follow a zero-waste philosophy – eight of your plants have been certified ‘Zero Waste to Landfill’. Could you tell us a little about what does this mean and how this waste is utilized? Is this something which can be extended to other facilities as well?

Actually 13 of our plants have been certified till date! As you know, Mahindra has very diversified businesses, and each company and each location will have a different style, sort, and quantity of waste to deal with. The certification entails a third party assessing the location to certify that the waste generated does not end up in a landfill; for the certification which these locations have received, the diversion of waste from the landfill needs to be at least 99%. So in the locations which are certified, almost 100% of the waste is not going to a landfill. The wastes are managed using 6R principles (reduce, reuse, recycle, refurbish, rethink, and repurpose/upcycle) either in-house or through authorized third parties.