Philippe Fonta, Managing Director, Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), was in Bengaluru recently to chair the CSI’s Safety Working Group in India, for the year 2014 -15. He spoke to BusinessLine and shared global best practices and where India stands in the world order among cement producers.

What is CSI? What is the action plan for India?

The Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI) is an industry body that works for common good, mainly on issues affecting the cement industry. Companies’ proprietary issues are not part of CSI agenda. We provide a platform to enable companies to share best practices with strict compliance with anti-trust rules. There is information that cannot be exchanged or shared with competitors. We (secretariat) use the third-party for data collection. The main agenda for India is in handling issues related to sustainability aspects from climate change to alternative fuels, health and safety, biodiversity, water, sustainable construction, working with suppliers and communications.

How many companies is part of CSI in India and globally?

At present there are ten companies in CSI network in India. Globally, there are 24 companies spread across more than 100 countries. Of the ten companies in India, three are headquartered in India and seven subsidiaries of major groups are functioning here. Recently, CSI has brought together 10 major cement producers – Ambuja, ACC, UltraTech, Zuari Cement, Shree Cement, Dalmia, Holcim, Heidelberg Cement, Lafarge and others to discuss issues facing the sector.

What are the challenges faced by you here towards addressing sustainability?

Challenges in India are common to global issues. The elements like the climate change, health and safety, maybe an issue in some parts of India. But water and water scarcity is a major issue. I would say similar to parts of Europe, but is also comparable to other parts in the world like China or in Latin America, where you have equally big an issue. So, lot needs to be done to recycle the water, to use less water in the process and a lot is being worked out by the companies both globally and in India.

Alternative fuels and co-processing: is there any breakthrough?

Some amount of work is on energy efficiency, especially the use of alternative fuels. The traditional fuels that are used are coal and pet coke. A lot of alternative fuels are possible and here we are exploring municipal solid waste, sewage sludge, including biomass, used tires, there are plenty of opportunities to be used in the cement.

How are Indian companies performing on biodiversity and land use management?

Biodiversity and land use management is the most important issue in the industry. The industry depends on natural resources to make cement – to get some limestone, to get all the raw materials from that, and it is important where the quarry are in operations.

On the biodiversity front, it is the management plan which involves identifying what the biodiversity context is be it the quarry which is already operational, to rehabilitate the quarry when the operation is over or ecological plan if the quarry is not yet in operation.

Here, CSI helps companies to build partnerships with NGOs who are specialists of biodiversity because they know exactly what to do and what not to do and by this cooperation, we can basically do more for biodiversity.

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