Bizmen vow to cut greenhouse gas emissions

Ruchika M Khanna

Chandigarh, February 24

“Pawan guru Pani pita mata dharat mhat …” when Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann repeated this couplet during the two days of the Progressive Punjab Investors’ Summit that ended today, he set the ball rolling for sustainable industrialisation of the state.

Most investors, who have committed to invest in the state in the coming days, have also promised to go in for sustainable industrialisation and the one where greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced gradually.

From PepsiCo to Nestle and Welspun to Hindustan Unilever all companies have committed to reduce their carbon footprints in a time-bound manner.

From promising to go for sustainable practices in growing horticulture crops needed by these FMCGs to adopting precision farming techniques, promoting efficient water irrigation to use of solar power and green building materials, industry captains of these companies today outlined their interventions in promoting sustainable industry, especially in the food processing sector.

George Koovor from PepsiCo said they recharged 530 million litres of water and reduced their water usage by 60 per cent in Punjab. Sundaram Krishnan of HUL, which makes tomato ketchup and jam at their plants in Rajpura and Nabha, said they wanted to go for end to end sustainable tomato cultivation in the state and stop getting tomatoes from Maharashtra.

Sandeep Goyal, representing Nestle India, said they were working to reduce their carbon footprints by 25 per cent by 2025. He said, “We also use solar power and bio digesters to convert manure into biogas, besides transporting milk through electric vehicles.”

An electric vehicle policy has also been released, following which Nestle will start using electric vehicles for transporting all its milk.

Anay Shukla of Welspun talked of making sustainable warehouses by reducing use of fresh cement and soil.

Even the industrial policy 2023, unveiled for the industry highlights incentivising those micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), which will comply with the environment norms.

Industries that install water pollution control devices will be reimbursed 50 per cent cost of the equipment and effluent treatment plants. Units that switch to boilers using paddy straw as fuel will get 75 per cent cost of boilers back in the form of SGST refunds. Incentives in the form of exemption from stamp duty will also be given to those units, which buy land for storing paddy.