Chairman’s Message
Today, world governments and companies recognise the importance of sustainability. In the face of Global Warming and Climate Change, it is a reality that we must deal with. One that Ambuja has been cognizant of for decades, and made giant strides in countering. I am delighted to present Ambuja Cement’s 9th Sustainable Development Report for 2015. This is also the second report based on the latest G4 comprehensive guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Our key focus in this report has been carbon emissions, and it highlights not only the issues but also Ambuja’s continuing efforts in reducing them. This report shares our community care initiatives, responsible environment management, resource conservation and corporate governance. Sustainability is integrated with the operations of Ambuja Cement. Each of these efforts consistently adds to our environmental and societal returns while creating positive impact in sustainability.
It was 29 years ago that we made a commitment to be the most sustainable cement company in India. Our journey with sustainability has continued unchecked, carried forward through the resolute enthusiasm of our team that has increased performance in several areas of governance, environment protection as well as social responsiveness. This was achieved through a variety of initiatives we undertook while also improving systems and processes to keep pace with long term objectives of the company. We launched a comprehensive materiality review and stakeholder (internal as well as external) consultation program in 2015 to facilitate a better understanding of the company’s obligations to its stakeholders while identifying material issues. This enabled us to revisit our materiality matrix to incorporate our stakeholders’ perceptions, key sustainability issues, and most material aspects concerning our business and stakeholders while also serving as a guide for further implementation, monitoring and reporting.
We made significant progress in the responsible use of resources, be it natural or man-made. In recent times when water has become a contentious issue, we maintained our status to become ‘Four Times Water Positive’, through water conservation in the surrounding community and water efficiency in our plants. Moreover, we became plastic positive, by burning as much as 60,545 tons of plastic waste in our kilns, the equivalent of 1.82 times of total plastic used in packing bags for our cement. We also generated 4.6% of our energy generation from Renewable Energy sources.
In the area of community development, our CSR arm, Ambuja Cement Foundation (ACF) continued their path-breaking efforts in serving communities at 21 locations in 11 states, implementing need based and participatory programmes in the areas of Water Resource Development, Health & Sanitation, Women Empowerment, Rural Infrastructure, Education and Agro-based/Skill-based Livelihood Creation. While the mandatory requirement of 2% CSR (as per Section-135 of the new Companies Act) was introduced in 2014, our spending has consistently been past this mark for many years now.
On behalf of the Board and the employees of our company, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our valued stakeholders, for their unstinted support and encouragement. I also invite valuable comments and suggestions from readers to enable us to achieve even higher standards and benchmarks in different areas of sustainable development.
