Cleaning Up Its Act

India Inc Is Going Green And Making Sustainability A Part Of The Manufacturing Process To Protect The Environment.

- Arnika Thakur

MAHENDRA SINGHI has some interesting stories to tell about what could be a very boring subject: cement. About how he met Nobel-winning climate guru Al Gore during a hastily planned trip to Washington in 1999. That’s where he first learnt about carbon credits or a mechanism that allows companies to buy carbon offsets from outside projects which avoid greenhouse gas emissions. It was his first tryst with the concept of sustainability or the idea of being clean, green, and still profitable. He was so sold on the idea that it became his business mantra after that. In the next three years, the company he headed at the time, Shree Cement, would make 45 crore by cleaning up its cement manufacturing process to earn carbon credits. It’s a hot June day in Delhi with temperatures at a high 48 degrees Celsius. I am sitting with Singhi, who now heads Dalmia Cement, in an air-conditioned office in central Delhi. He tells me there was a time in the 1970s and 1980s when if he saw smoke billowing from a factory chimney, he’d be content seeing the plant was in full production. “At the time people didn’t realise we were not emitting dust, but we were emitting money,” the 66-year-old Singhi tells Fortune India