Vedanta Aluminium Business, India’s largest producer of aluminium, has recycled 14 billion litres of water as of January 2022 in FY 21-22, leveraging advanced technologies for focused control and monitoring of water consumption.
Vedanta Aluminium’s water sustainability efforts are guided by its robust Water Management Policy. In line with the company’s commitment to the 6th UN Sustainable Development Goal – Clean Water and Sanitation, Vedanta Aluminium strives to fulfill its water sustainability goals in three ways – increasing water reutilization, reducing freshwater consumption, and ensuring zero liquid discharge from operations. Vedanta Aluminium is also working with local communities and farmers in the regions where it operates to construct water harvesting and conservation infrastructures for perennial water supply.
Speaking about Vedanta Aluminium’s approach to water stewardship, Mr. Rahul Sharma, CEO – Aluminium Business, said, “Excellence in ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) forms the bedrock upon which we evolve our business plans. On World Water Day, we recommit to our vision of ensuring a sustainable water footprint in the regions where we operate. Our vision is rooted in the understanding that water is a critical shared resource that is crucial to sustaining the ecology and communities around us. Our journey towards making our operations water positive will ensure sustainability of our business and make available more water for local communities and biodiversity.”
Standing testimony to this year’s World Water Day theme of ‘Groundwater: Making the invisible visible’, Vedanta Aluminium has undertaken robust measures to optimize water consumption across its value-chain and increase the share of recycled and reused water, such as:
- Water-screening assessment to develop and implement stringent control measures to ensure zero discharge operations.
- Integration of water management into decision-making processes for all projects.
- Operational excellence in Cooling Tower systems have resulted in one of the best Cycles of Concentration (COC) globally; higher the COC, less is the freshwater intake, thus resulting in freshwater conservation.
- Deployment of High-Concentration Slurry Disposal (HCSD) systems in ash management, which ensures maximum water recycling through feedback loops.
- Robust monitoring of water quality parameters, including reduction of specific water consumption.
- Regular water consumption-related audits, and appropriate measures to ensure continually improved performance.
- Optimization of freshwater intake by maximizing usage of water recycled through state-of-the-art Effluent Treatment Plants (ETP), augmented with Ultra Filtration (UF) and Reverse Osmosis (RO).
- Rainwater harvesting infrastructure and on-site water reservoirs have been created for water sourcing during contingency scenarios.
- Quick Response Teams to respond to extreme weather conditions, including unprecedented heavy rainfall.
Working in the realm of sustainable livelihoods and climate impact mitigation, Vedanta Aluminium is:
- Building and rejuvenating hundreds of community water infrastructures like tube wells, bore wells, ponds, farm ponds, percolation tanks, etc. to help communities get perennial access to water for household and irrigation purposes.
- Helping local farming communities adopt drip-irrigation, treadle pump, solar powered water pumps, rainwater harvesting structures like percolation tanks, etc. to boost irrigation potential and reduce dependency on monsoons for cropping.
- Training communities on growing climate-resilient crops for improving yield in the face of irregular climactic conditions
Vedanta Aluminium Business, a division of Vedanta Limited, is India’s largest manufacturer of aluminium, producing half of India’s aluminium i.e., 1.97 million tonnes in FY21.