Hindustan Zinc going all out to decrease water footprint

Hindustan Zinc has installed effluent treatment plants with reverse osmosis technology at all its smelting locations, resulting in the reduction of its freshwater footprint, a company statement said here Friday.

The water footprint is the amount of freshwater utilised in the production or supply of the goods and services used by a particular person or group.

The company has also installed adiabatic cooling towers to reduce water wastage in the form of evaporation losses by almost 80 percent. This is done by operating in a closed circuit.

To give impetus to green energy, Hindustan Zinc has commissioned 273.5 megawatt (MW) of wind farms located in five states of India - Gujarat (88.8 MW), Karnataka (49.40 MW), Rajasthan (88.8 MW), Maharashtra (25.5 MW) and Tamil Nadu (21 MW).

The company's entire capacity of wind power generation has been registered under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) programme of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the statement added.

"Hindustan Zinc has been successful in reducing annual average emissions of 497,209 tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalents, by producing 536,882 MW per year (average) equivalent amount of clean energy."

Other than wind projects, the company's 9.4 MW waste heat recovery Steam Turbine Generation and 21 TPH Low Calorific Value Gas boilers are also registered under CDM.

It has helped Hindustan Zinc reduce carbon footprints by 583,685 tonnes of CO2 per annum. The company has also reduced carbon footprints by 116,992 tonnes of CO2 from initiatives other than the registered CDM projects, the statement said.