Health, Safety & Environment - Our prime Concern and Commitment

We have a well defined sustainability framework that comprises of governance structures and policies. Our Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) processes are reviewed monthly by Business Management group at company level and overseen by a Board appointed committee at Group level every quarter.

Safety
Visible commitment by senior management, PPE compliances, structured training, safety workshops, internal and external audits and implementation of recommendations are the drivers in our safe journey. We have consistently improved our safety performance by reducing Lost- Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) by over 85% from 25.21 to 3.72 at our operation over last five years and we stay committed to have zero workplace injury.

Occupational Health
We aim to eliminate occupational illness through providing a workplace that is free from occupational health risk and hygiene hazard and proactively work with employees and contractor to contribute towards healthier lifestyles. This enables us to increase our productivity, reduce absenteeism. Occupational health experts are present across all mines and smelters for regular health examination of employees at workplaces. Specific examination like blood lead test, audiometric tests, spirometry test, ECG and chest x-rays are carried out.

Environment
Hindustan Zinc has been a key initiator in adopting clean green technology. Today Company’s plants run on state-of-the-art environment friendly technologies. “Hydrometallurgical Technology” is being used in most of the Zinc Smelters and “Ausmelt Technology” in Lead Smelter. Being a technology driven company, Hindustan Zinc project team has played a pivotal role in finding suitable eco-friendly technology that resulted in innovation in ‘Cansolv Technology’ in the lead plant at its unit at Chanderiya to control SO2 emissions by converting lean & varying SO2 concentration gas in the Sulphuric acid. In the research process the team interacted with world class technology providers such as Outokumpu-Lurgi of Germany & Cansolv of Canada. Hindustan Zinc is the first metallurgical industry in the world to use such technology and a number of companies from China, Brazil, and Kazakhstan and also within India have visited the plant to understand its operations.

We have installed Tail Gas Treatment plants (TGT) at all our smelting locations to reduce SO2 emissions below the national standards. The technology was taken from Mitsubushi Japan and invested more than 30 crores INR though cheaper technologies were available. The technology adopted does not produce any waste and effluent.
We have also been successful in reducing our water-footprints by reducing our specific water consumption (i.e. water consumed per tonne of output) at our mines and smelters by 56% and 35% respectively over last four years. All of our sites are maintaining zero discharge. Reverse osmosis plants
integrated to Effluent Treatment Plants have been commissioned at all smelters to reduce fresh water consumption.

We believe in energy efficiency and optimization, which reduces operating costs and impact on environment by reducing direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. Through our continuous efforts over the years for energy conservation and captive power generations, which operated at benchmark efficiency, we have been successful in reducing our specific energy consumption (i.e. energy consumed per tonne of output) of our mines and smelters by 24% and 31% over last four years.

We are harnessing green energy of 123.2 MW through wind power mills in Gujarat and Karnataka. We are also exploring to increase the capacity of our wind power mills and are looking for suitable sites.

We have three CDM projects registered at UNFCCC which includes 88.8 MW Wind power mills in Gujarat, 34.4 MW wind power project in Karnataka and 9.4 MW waste heat recovery boiler in Chanderiya smelter. Three more projects are in pipeline; host country approval received for two of them. During this year, we have sold 28,500 CERs and 2,63,000 VERs generating revenues of INR 6.4 crores.

For the gainful utilization of slag, a waste generated at pyro smelter of CLZS, extensive R&D has been carried out with premier institutions like National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCCBM), Central Road Research Institute (CRRI), and Malviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) which indicated its gainful utilization in cement manufacturing and for road construction. Based on this, we have approached numbers of near-by cement industries. With the required approval from the statutory bodies we have been successful in utilizing this slag in cement manufacturing and so far 6.15 lac MT of slag has been utilized and old stockpile has been reduced considerably and expected to liquidate completely by next year.

Also, we are utilizing 100% fly ash generated at our power plants for cement manufacturing. All our waste including hazardous waste which are not utilized are disposed safely in secured landfills which are designed with state-of-art technologies and approved by statutory bodies. The water qualities around such landfills are monitored regularly.

All our operating sites are surrounded with dense plantation and every year plantation is done to further improve its density and increase the greenbelt coverage. The total populations of our plantation are more than 900,000 across all our operating locations.