Vinay Mahajan, of SN Pingle consultants who designed the eco-friendly plant, said, “ We used a by-product of thermal power plants, fly-ash for building the bricks.”

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.