Effluent Quality

All our business units are required to have internal effluent quality targets, more stringent than the statutory standards. Our units, with their state-of-the-art effluent treatment facilities, have made significant progress towards international benchmarks on quality and quantity of treated wastewater discharge.

The issue of effluent quality is a serious challenge for our Paperboards & Paper units. The graph below reflects our efforts in improving effluent quality in these units in 2007-08, which is significantly better than the prescribed standards of the Central Pollution Control Board of India.

The voluntary charter on Corporate Responsibility for Environmental Protection (by the Ministry of Environment & Forests and the Central Pollution Control Board), has identified various measures to be adopted by seventeen industry sectors in India to effectively combat pollution. The charter for large Pulp & Paper mills requires the following compliance initiatives. Our performance vis-à-vis each of the requirements is stated below -

• Wastewater discharge to be less than 100 KL per tonne of paper

Our Paperboards & Specialty Paper units’ performance in this regard has been exemplary.

The National Productivity Council (NPC) has recently studied various Indian Pulp & Paper industries and the available technologies. NPC report proposes 3 standards for the integrated Pulp & Paper mills on specific wastewater discharge in m³/tonne -

• Benchmark - 50
• Best achievable - 53
• Relaxed standard - 63

Our only integrated Pulp & Paper/Paperboards mill at Bhadrachalam has consistently reduced specific wastewater discharge. The current specific wastewater discharge at 53.9 m³/tonne is close to the best achievable standard and is progressing towards achieving the benchmark standard.