ITC green initiatives covers 2,00,000 hectares

Y C Deveshwar, chairman, ITC, while addressing his team at the 104th Annual General Meeting of ITC on 31 July, 2015, in pursuit of ''The Make in India'' vision shared that the conglomerate has been carbon positive for 10 years, water positive for 13 years and solid waste recycling positive for eight years now. The conglomerate regularly reports the creation of sustainable livelihoods.

10 Aug 2015 | By PrintWeek India

Pradeep Dhobale, executive director, ITC Kolkata said, the initiative covers about six million people now.

In an interview to a business daily, he added that "We needed to use trees, and so we went into research to grow trees using less water and at a faster rate, and we decided to incentivise farmers to grow more.

It took ITC eight to 10 years to come upon a model that give the results that were sought.

Dhobale said, "We could have imported pulp, but that meant jobs were being exported to other geographies. Over the past 15 years, our afforestation programme has generated nearly 90 million person days of employment and covered nearly 2,00,000 hectares. And while our farmers are free to sell to anyone, we also buy from them at market price."

Dhobale highlighted the moves and continuous efforts towards sustainability at a scale that is critical for business.

During the interview, Dhobale added, ''The ITC paper segment would be one of the business showcase and it is one of the outcomes achieved over the years and the conventional paper mills operated on forest consumption. The earlier model, where commercial enterprises paid to the government for reforestation efforts wasn’t working. We wanted more trees, and so we went on for research to grow trees using less water and at a faster rate, and we decided incentivize farmers to grow more,'' said Dhobale.

Y C Deveshwar, chairman, ITC, while addressing his team at the 104th Annual General Meeting of ITC on 31 July, 2015, in pursuit of ''The Make in India'' vision shared, ''ITC in India is the largest producer of paperboards with world-class standards, and it is a clear market leader in this value added segment. In addition to this, the company is also the largest producer of printed packaging for the consumer goods industry.''

''The company's vital brands also include Classmate and Paperkraft in the education and stationery products category. Aashirvaad and Sunfeast have already treasured the consumers spend of over Rs 2,000 crores each, while Classmate and Bingo have crossed Rs 1000 crore mark. It is the company's aspiration to achieve, at the very least, a revenue of Rs 1,00,000 crores from the new FMCG businesses by 2030,'' said Deveshwar in his speech.