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VISION
To become a green technology leader in the industry and reduce our environmental footprint. We are working to achieve this by innovating processes for water stewardship; introducing captive usage of energy from renewable sources; and adopting new methods for waste recycling.
APPROACH
The three key constituents of our strategy to manage environmental footprint are:
STRATEGIC PRIORITIES
Environmental incidents and performance
HZL has established a sophisticated digital platform known as "Vunified" for managing environmental incidents. This system allows employees to report incidents that occur within the plant premises. It ensures a systematic approach to incident management, facilitating prompt responses and fostering long-term improvements.
The Environment Incident Reporting and Management System encompasses the following steps:
This structured process ensures that environmental incidents are managed efficiently, with effective measures taken to address and prevent future occurrences.
Water
Our operations are water-intensive, and we are working in water scarce areas thus, we are working towards reducing our freshwater intake and to bring down process-related water consumption, we improvised several procedures and introduced modified technologies. We are integrating water responsibility into our business strategies and conducting regular assessment of water risk to understand its impact on our business. Our comprehensive initiatives are effective in mitigating water risk in a sustained manner.
Our water management policy encourages the recognition of the social, economic, and environmental value of water and the increasing global concern around its scarcity. We aim to reduce our freshwater consumption and protect water quality of resources and become 5 times positive organization by 2025.
Climate Change and Energy
Climate change is a key global risk that is directly influenced by human activity and requires decisive action. We have a responsibility to help address this global challenge by reducing emissions at our operations and in our value chain and by sustainably producing the metals, minerals and energy that are essential for building the technologies and infrastructure needed to transition to a low-carbon economy. We contribute to a low-carbon future by producing essential metals and minerals, reducing our carbon footprint, advocating for climate action, and strengthening our resiliency to climate risks.
At HZL, we believe in Zero Waste to landfill and have designed a comprehensive approach in managing the waste generated. We have aligned our waste management practices to ‘4R’ strategy – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Reclaim. With the commitment to continuously monitor and reduce our waste generation, we are moving steadily towards our vision of Zero waste to landfill. One of our Sustainability Goals 2025 is to achieve 3 times increases in gainful utilization of smelting process waste by 2025. Through various initiatives and state of the art technologies, we continuously strive to employ opportunities that result in reduced waste generation and help mitigate the potential waste related impacts.
All the Company’s tailings facilities are designed and constructed to the highest engineering standards and meet regulatory requirements and best-in-class benchmark practices. We have implemented global leading practice in tailings dam management and have appointed a global expert to provide long-term monitoring and advice on the design, construction, and operation of all our tailings facilities. We are working to incorporate the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) approach to tailings management.
AIR EMISSIONS MANAGEMENT
Apart from GHG emissions, our mining, smelting and captive power plants (CPP) operations result in other air emissions such as Particulate Matter (PM), Nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, and Sulphur oxide (SOx) emissions, which negatively impact the air quality. We continuously work towards reducing air emissions as this can cause serious impacts on the environment and local communities. Broadly, our air quality management strategy involves the usage of well-designed state of art air pollution control devices, effective fugitive emission management, as well as continuous emission monitoring and reporting. Hindustan Zinc is committed to measure, control, and reduce air emissions at each of its sites and comply with the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) 2009, to ensure ambient air quality parameters.
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is one of the critical global challenges of our time. Action in line with the nature positive goals is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, given the inextricable links between climate change, water, biodiversity, and socio-economic development. This integrated approach is at the heart of HZL’s Sustainability Strategy, which reflect our long-standing commitment to responsible business and to enhancing the contribution of minerals and metals to sustainable development.
One of our Sustainability Goals 2025 is to Protect and enhance biodiversity throughout the life cycle by adopting a mitigation hierarchy framework- avoid, minimize, reclaim and offset the negative impacts on biodiversity at our operations. We continue to work towards securing a minimum of No Net Loss (NNL) of biodiversity and Net Positive Gain (NPG) of biodiversity for critical habitats. We also commit to not to explore, mine or drill in World Heritage sites and to respect all legally designated protected areas, including International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) category I,II,III and IV category. With regards to deforestation issue, we commit to implement pathways to avoid deforestation as per the prevailing rules and regulations, including compensatory afforestation.
Sustainable Mining
HZL’s vision for sustainable mining is aligned to ensure that we make a positive impact across the entire mining value chain and deliver sustained business results. “Innovation strategy, enabling technologies, and collaborative partnerships” are the key aspects that guides our Sustainable Mining strategy. Broadly, our strategy for sustainable mining plan is focused to ensure positive impact across the 3 focus areas i.e., Identifying Environmental & Social Risks across the project lifecycle, Managing Environmental & Social Impacts in development & operations phase and Asset closure management. As part of sustainable mining plan, we try to limit damages to environment by ensuring our performance is on track with respect to our Sustainability Goals for 2025. Also, we contribute to community development through infrastructure development as well as livelihood opportunities for locals and are undertaken as per our CSR Policy. Regarding asset closure management, we consider sustainable mine closure right from the time of inception of mine lifecycle and therefore, at HZL, we have progressive mine closure plans for all our mines which are created in parallel to mining plans. We monitor and address the social impacts and concerns of the communities during and after the mine closure phase.