Sustainability Updates  

‘Solid Waste Recycling’

Another Environmental Footprint Turning Green

Solid waste management, in India, is an area of serious concern, with significant proportion of waste being disposed through land filling and dumping.

Most land fills and dumping sites are serious health hazards to people living in the neighbourhood and can also cause soil and water contamination.

Cigarette factories at Bengaluru, Saharanpur, Munger and Kolkata, Leaf Threshing Units at Chirala & Anaparti, Paperboards & Specialty Paper Units at Tribeni, the ITC Green Centre at Gurgaon, Surya Nepal’s Cigarette factory at Simra, Foods & Personal Care Products Units in Haridwar and ITC Hotels - Maurya, Maratha, Grand Central, Sonar, Windsor, Mughal, Kakatiya & Sheraton Rajputana and Chola reused/ recycled nearly 100% of all solid waste.

ITC not only recycled almost all the solid waste generated by its Units, but also procured and recycled 125,337 tonnes of waste paper this year, resulting in yet another positive environmental footprint.

Creating Wealth Out of Waste (WOW)

ITC’s Paperboards business has launched a milestone programme called ‘Wealth out of Waste (WOW)’ for efficient collection and recycling of waste paper, targeting large sources of aggregation such as schools, offices, residential colonies and apartment blocks.

The WOW initiative now covers Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Khammam District in Andhra Pradesh and Kovai District in Tamil Nadu.

Widely acknowledged by civic bodies and the media, this initiative has helped create awareness among the public on the advantages of the‘Reduce-Reuse-Recycle’ process. The WOW initiative also contributes to protecting the environment, improving civic amenities as well as public health and hygiene while at the same time, generating cost-effective raw material for the paper, plastics, metal and glass industries.

To emphasise the importance of source segregation, ITC provides special bags to accumulate dry waste like paper, plastic and metals and arranges periodic collection through outsourced agencies. The waste paper is used by ITC and the other materials are sold to recycling units. Segregated dry waste can save almost 40% of municipal garbage handling costs, thereby releasing resources for other civic amenities.