Sugar industry, one of the most polluting industries, seems to have realised the importance of going green. At least eight sugar factories have just agreed to join a pilot launched by the CII-Green Business Centre (GBC).

The GBC, which has recently launched GreenCo certification for industries, will now begin certification for sugar factories. The pilot has segregated different workflows in a sugar producing unit, including sugar production, co-generation and how it deals with the wastes.

“Our aim is not to exclude most of the units from certification. We will encourage them by appreciating their efforts to improve their performance. In order to encourage them, our certification process would focus more  on the processes than on the systems,” K S Venkatagiri, Deputy Executive Director of CII-Godrej GBC, told Business Line on the sidelines of Green Sugar Summit 2014 here on Thursday.

“We rate the companies against 1,000 parameters, 300 in the systems and the remaining in the processes. We keep on raising the bar year after year,” he said.

The GBC has released the manual GreenCo Rating for Sugar Sector to a number of sugar factory representatives. This is only a pilot version of certification for this sector. “After learning from feedback, we will come out with a full version in the next edition of Green Sugar Summit next year,” he said.

Other sectors

“The GreenCo certification overall has received a good response so far. We have rated 26 companies in sectors like cement, automobile, tyre and power. We see a scope for 100 companies in the next few months,” he said.

The two-day meeting discusses various technologies and processes that can reduce pollutants from sugar factories.

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