Hindustan Zinc reinforces its commitment to sustainable mining, becomes COP26 Business Leader

The company has also taken a holistic view in setting its sustainability goals 2025 and over the next five years.

UDAIPUR: Sustainability is embedded in the business philosophy of Hindustan Zinc (HZL) and the company is committed to adoption of sustainable practices and conservation of natural resources. Reinforcing its commitment to responsible mining, the company has become #COP26 Business Leader and is consistently working towards achieving Science-Based Targets (SBT’s) to curb carbon footprint.

Arun Misra, CEO, Hindustan Zinc said, “HZL as a responsible corporate is committed to adopting and maintaining global best practices for reducing carbon footprint from its business operations. Setting SBTs has helped us to define our sustainable roadmap and is certainly expected to reduce the company’s overall energy consumption, safeguard its future and enhance brand value”.

Meeting science-based targets in the context of a growing business can be difficult but responding to this challenge, HZL has implemented a range of measures to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 emissions throughout its supply chain. The company has been diligently investing towards efficient use of energy and gainful utilization of wastes using environment-friendly methods.

The company has green power capacity of 349 MW, which includes 275 MW of wind (non-captive), 40 MW (captive) solar capacity and 34 MW of waste heat power. Importantly, most of the company’s projects have been rated under Gold Standard.

In the past 17 years, Hindustan Zinc has invested more than $3 billion in expansion projects and has achieved a mined metal capacity of 1.2 million tonnes, adding value to state and nation’s developmen. The company also employs more than 19,000 people across its units and is Great Place to Work-CertifiedTM by Great Place to Work Institute. The induced impact on India’s GDP is 0.53 per cent and contributes around 1.8% to the GDP of the state of Rajasthan.

In terms of scale, Hindustan Zinc has gradually increased its capacities and product portfolio, without compromising on quality and efficiency parameters. The company recognizes that being more sustainable is being more successful. From innovations to scaling sustainable mining models to long-term environmental and community growth, the company’s sustainability strategies are driven with the purpose of caring & growing together across the value chain.

Continued efforts towards sustainable mining have resulted in HZL being ranked 1st in Asia Pacific by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, being a 2.41x water positive company, a member of the FTSE4Good Index for the 4th consecutive year among other achievements and has scored ‘A’ rating by CDP for climate change, the company said.

The company has also taken a holistic view in setting its sustainability goals 2025 and over the next five years, it will focus on expanding its efforts work towards creating positive changes. The five-year sustainability development goals will provide the company with additional opportunities to improve performance and also enable it to focus on reducing the carbon impacts across the value chain.

The purpose of the COP26 Business Leaders is to bring an exclusive & experienced group of industry leaders from across a diverse number of economic sectors to get perspectives on how to drive further climate action across value and supply chains.