Conserving mangroves to becoming plastic-negative

From conservation of wetlands and mangroves in India to achieving a 50% reduction in energy and water usage, sustainability has been baked into almost everything that engineering firm Godrej & Boyce (G&B) does.

The story of the company’s conservation of the Vikhroli mangroves in Mumbai has been told many times. It’s a story that began from almost the 1940s. But G&B has now taken the mangroves conservation initiative global through an app it developed in 2017. The app, which provides extensive information on mangroves conservation and which was initially developed in English, is today not only available in Hindi and nine Indian coastal languages, but also in French and Spanish. And while it started off with information on 24 species of mangroves, today it has information on 67 species.

Tejashree Joshi, general manager and head of environment and sustainability in G&B, says the app has been downloaded in 120 countries, and is used for sharing information on managing wetlands. Global NGOs and researchers are among its users.

Mangroves act as shock absorbers during high tides and prevent soil erosion. Its sturdy root system forms a natural barrier against violent storm surges and floods. The app was developed by G&B’s wetland management services department, with Godrej Infotech providing its technical competence in software design and development. The app is available across Android, iOS and Windows.

The app is an integral part of G&B’s ‘Magical Mangroves’ awareness campaign communication kit. It has been used to manage mangroves and wetlands across India. In partnership with nature conservation organisation WWF India, Magical Mangroves has helped sensitise more than 35,000 residents of Mumbai in the last four years, Tejashree says. A study conducted by a team of scientists at G&B found that the Godrej mangroves at Vikhroli have helped store more than ten lakh tonnes of carbon dioxide since its inception.

“By putting together a coalition of like-minded entities, called the India Wetlands Coalition, G&B has spearheaded the India Business and Biodiversity Initiative of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). This has facilitated mainstreaming of biodiversity concerns in business decisions,” Tejashree says.


Plastic-negative
The mangroves initiative is today just one element of the sustainability programme of G&B, a company that builds custom engineering solutions for critical industries like aerospace, defence, clean energy, railways and automotive, and also manufactures branded goods in home appliances and interiors, and locks. Zurvan Marolia, SVP & head of G&B’s manufacturing council, says sustainability finds relevance in operations only when green tenets are incorporated in the entire organisational framework.

G&B is one of the first organisations in India to become plastic negative. Since 2018, the company has been recycling plastic equivalent to, or more than, all the plastic used in packaging of its products. In 2019-20, it recycled 146% of its own plastic consumption. The year after, it was 201% – it recycled 3,264 tonnes of packaging plastic waste as against 1,616 tonnes of consumption.

“Under Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), we have recycled more than double of what we have consumed in our operations,” Tejashree says. EPR is an environmental policy approach in which a producer’s responsibility for a product is extended to the post-consumer stage of a product’s life cycle. In the last four years, G&B has recycled about 11,000 tonnes of plastic through the EPR programme, and by 2030, it plans to systematically phase out thermocol (polystyrene) and introduce recycled content in all its plastic packaging.

Waste-to-worth

The company has eliminated the use of multilayer packaging by substituting it with recyclable mono-material, and use of honeycomb-structured corrugated boxes in place of thermocol. Corrugated boxes utilise 100% recycled paper. Waste material sheets, such as TetraPak waste sheets, is being used in place of virgin thermocol sheets, for packaging. Single-use cups, dishes, other cutlery items and water bottles have been completely eliminated from G&B offices.

All of these initiatives contributed to the company winning CII’s 3R (Reduce-Reuse-Recycle) Award in 2021.