Industry, government has to work together to achieve sustainability

In a discussion Dr Jacques Perez, Vice Chairman, CFO and Managing Director at Lanxess India Pvt Ltd with Chemical Today magazine speaks about the together for sustainability (TfS) initiative and sustainability in the chemical industry.

Defining sustainability in chemical industry:

Sustainability is about offering products and solutions to address the challenges of water, agriculture, organisation and transportation while contributing positively to the environment and the society.

Initiatives at Lanxess towards sustainability:

We largely focus on the conservation of natural resources, protection of the environment, limiting greenhouse gas, etc. In one of our plants in Madhya Pradesh, we have set up a sewage treatment plant which treats the sewage water from the surrounding areas and makes it fit for usage.

We have also set up waste water post-treatment plant which treats water from effluent treatment plants to make it reusable for production processes. With these initiatives, we have made this site a zero discharge site and we plan to do the same on our other sites as well.

Driving resilience and sustainability in chemical industry supply chain:

There needs to be an alignment in understanding the framework of sustainability. We hear a lot about sustainability and CSR but CSR is only a part of sustainability. If we define the framework, it incorporates corporate governance, sustainability from a social, economic and corporate perspective and thereby the industry can embed corporate responsibility within their business approach and within the overall supply value chain. Once we have an understanding of the framework, we will have more specific vendors and specific challenges to address. TfS is an initiative to drive our supply chain into a partnership and have them embrace the same values of sustainability as ours. This is a long journey which has to be done on a day to day basis.

Role of government in driving sustainability:

Sustainability cannot be addressed by one industry or by one company. It really has to be a co-operation and co-ordination among all stakeholders. Industry and government form the important stakeholders and they need to be aligned on the framework of sustainability.

The government of India has taken a lot of steps over the past few years but there is still more to do on achieving sustainability. This is not a one-time investment project but needs medium to long-term development investments. Enforcing compliance with regulation on everybody across the globe is also something which is strongly needed to drive all companies towards the same goal. The industry and the government have to work together to achieve sustainability. There is no another option.

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