Tata Steel, Responsible Steel for a Sustainable Future
Steel with its unique properties like durability, strength, ductility, and formability has been an integral part of the society for centuries. In the near future, with growth in emerging economies, steel demand will continue to increase. Steel manufacturing is one of the most energy-intensive industrial activity with dependency on natural resources. This activity impacts the society with its emissions and by-product generations. Typically, manufacturing 1 million tons of steel needs about 3 million tonnes of raw materials including coal, iron ore, ferroalloys and water. The iron & steel making process results in emissions (e.g. CO2, dust & other gases), discharge of effluents and solid waste generation.
Tata Steel as a responsible organization and one of world’s largest steel producer is committed to managing operations responsibly along with continuous improvement in energy conservation and resource efficiency across the value chain. Starting from our captive mines and collieries, manufacturing sites to the customer use phase of our products and end of life phase, we are focused to minimize our environmental footprint.
Operational excellence through continuous improvement in existing processes and adoption of new technologies at our mines and steel works help us to achieve abatement of CO2 emissions and minimization of the water footprint. We are committed to 100% utilization of the solid waste generated from our manufacturing process and have been working on new avenues and opportunities for increasing the utilization of LD slag; disposal of LD slag is a problem for all steel manufacturers across the globe. We are also engaging actively with IUCN for implementation of Biodiversity Action Plans at our mining locations and investing in renewable energy. We are committed to designing of sustainable products that contribute to solutions, which are lighter, stronger and lasts longer and uses lesser resources to produce.
With the regulatory environment becoming more stringent and community expectations of environmental performance growing, we have begun to focus more on product stewardship and environmental declarations for our products. Effective utilization of Life cycle assessment tool will help us to understand impacts of our product through all its life stages.
Sustainability is embedded in the consciousness of Tata Steel. This stems from our visionary founder JN Tata’s belief that society is not just another stakeholder but the very purpose of doing business. Our policies (Sustainability, Environment, Climate Change, Energy, Biodiversity etc.) provide overall guidance to mitigate the impacts. Tata Steel is the only Asian steel company to be recognized as Sustainability Champion for 2017 by World Steel Association. We are one of the leading Steel companies in CDP & DJSI disclosures and endorse United Nations Global Compact principles. Our Jamshedpur Steel Plant is GreenCo platinum rated by CII in 2016. Most of our mining and manufacturing sites have Environmental Management System certified to ISO 14001:2015.
Above all, we operate in a way that is safe for our stakeholders and respectful of the environment. We are conscious of our responsibility towards the community around our areas of operations. As champions of the circular economy, we are mindful of our carbon footprint throughout our value chain and have instituted actions to mitigate the same.
We aspire to create a sustainable future for all our stakeholders across the value chain.