At Ranjangaon plant, Cummins races ahead in green initiatives

CGT’s new plant at Ranjangaon, incorporates a range of environment-friendly features, right from the construction materials to waste disposal. What is unique about the initiative is that while many other companies have ‘gone green’ on a piece-meal basis, such as the disposal of waste, or in the selection of construction material for their buildings, CGT’s is the first plant to have gone the whole hog.

“For us, in corporate life, ‘green’ is a societal obligation” said Pradip Bhargava, MD, CGT, “ If long-term sustainability is a question mark in the context of environmental and climate changes, it has to be addressed by industry as a key member of civic society.” So the plant on the 11-acre plot has a 25 square metre wind tower, that provides natural ventilation and cooling for the 50,000 sq feet shop floor. Use of glasswool to construct the roof makes sure that maximum use is made of the available daylight. In fact, artificial lights are not used during daytime on the shop floor. And when employees forget and leave lights on, the automated building management system switches them off after a certain period. Even the taps, if left turned on, are turned off by this system. Some of the machinery runs not on electricity, but on alternate energy sources like compressed air.

The company has also gone for rain-water harvesting--rain water runoff is collected, filtered and allowed to percolate recharging ground water levels. Shantanu Suvaranapathaki, a senior employee, said that about 300 kgs of compost will be generated from the plant’s waste every year and about five lakh litres of rain water will be harvested. For the record, the plant, inaugurated in January 2008, produces 80 alternators a day, a figure which company officials point out, will go upto about 150 by December this year. Three thousand trees have been planted, and 35 per cent of the plot is dedicated to green cultivation.

Bhargav says that along with “doing the right thing”, the initiatives also make great business sense. “Apart from the wind tunnel, which cost a little over a crore, we did not incur any other extra costs. In fact, our electricity bill has come down by 25-30 per cent.”

Over the first ten years the facility is expected to save over 14 million KW of electricity and avoid over 14,500 tons of carbon-dioxide emissions. That is the equivalent of removing 274 cars from the roads, stated the company release.