It pays to be sustainable, if one goes by what cement maker ACC has to say.
The company has saved close to Rs 47 crore in 2010 through the increased use of alternative fuel and raw materials such as plastic waste and tyre chips for co-processing in its cement kilns.
This cost saving is 15 per cent more than the Rs 40.77-crore achieved in the previous year, according to ACC's latest Sustainable Development Report, 2010. ACC has undertaken co-processing trials of 23 different wastes including liquids such as spent wash and acid tar sludge at its plants in Wadi and Jumi. ACC had rolled out the alternate fuel and raw material policy across the company in August last year.
The company has increased the consumption of industrial wastes for co-processing by 50 per cent in 2010 over previous year. ACC co-processed about 1.98 lakh tonnes of alternative raw materials such as fly-ash and slag and 22,092 tonnes of alternative fuels in its kilns.
ACC has extended support to various municipal bodies to dispose waste plastics from the municipal solid wastes. It has also long-term agreement with waste generating companies to source such waste products.
Co-processing of industrial wastes in cement kilns has been recognised by the regulatory authority and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has come out with the guidelines for the same last year.
The use of hazardous incinerable waste such as plastics and tyre chips in cement kilns not only helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but also avoids creation of landfills.
Wastes co-processed by cement firms such as ACC and Grasim Industries include sludge from petrochemical or oil refinery and effluent treatment plant (ETP), waste oil, paints and spent carbon.
India produces about 6.2 million tonnes (mt) of hazardous waste including 0.41 mt of incinerable wastes, according to CPCB. However, only 12 States have 27 hazardous treatment, storage and disposable facilities. Major waste generating States include Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.