Ecowatch
Wealth out of waste
SWAHILYA
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Clanging metals and a tranquil forest: the success story of Sundaram-Clayton's integrated industrial waste management.
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Photo: K. Pichumani
Going green: The pond within the factory premises.
A SERENE forest surrounded by a tranquil lake, birds to nest and plenty of bamboos — all in a corner of polluted and dusty Padi in the suburbs of Chennai. Well, the Die Casting unit of Sundaram-Clayton of the TVS group has made the unthinkable a reality — creating wealth out of waste. It is an excellent example of how human beings can work in tune with nature even in highly industrial environments.
Careful practices
Identities dissolve as uniformed personnel of the company pick up their lunch plates for their breakfast or lunch. The discipline of emptying their food waste and washing their plates is the same across several levels of the management. Canteen Manager, K.P. Suresh says that this practice makes way for 45 kg of kitchen waste which go for composting.
The canteen waste of the company is composted along with the yard and other wastes in a zero-discharge system along with 300 kl of water, which is also recycled and reused in the paddy fields.
The vast stretch of land was once polluted like the Cooum. But the afforestation project with a huge rainwater harvest lake with 25 lakh litres of water is the brainchild of the company's managing director Venu Srinivasan, says C. John Peter Raj, the Manager-Civil, who also takes care of the company's environmental and housekeeping support services.
Haven for birds
Egrets, woodpeckers, barbets and many other varieties of birds gather for nesting in the islands that have 120 varieties of cacti, several species of grass and fruit bushes including Singapore cherries for the birds to feed. A watchman walks ahead in boots, tapping the leaf-covered ground with a stick to keep the snakes away. The protein particles in the lake are food for fish that are harvested in the lakes.
There are around 6,000 trees in the premises of the company, including 4,000 in the forest area alone. There is no interference in the forest ecosystem, with bamboos and water lilies growing in a corner of the lake. The soil has been allowed to regenerate itself with the leaves falling down to form a thick dry carpet on the ground. The self-rejuvenating forest is also an experimental space for rare varieties of local tree species such as the Karuvelam, and the Vellerukku.
Here trees really are taken care of. "If a tree is ill, tree doctors are invited from Pondicherry's Auroville. They have tools with which they operate upon the trees and even apply medicines and antiseptics and bandage the wounds!" says a staffer.
Sultan Ahmed Ismail, Director of the Ecoscience Research Foundation, who has advised the company on its sludge management and composting, is highly appreciative of their attempt to integrate every aspect of waste management into one composite whole.
Taking from nature and giving back in the same measure seems to be the motto of Sundaram-Clayton, which has been successfully practising the art of composting and soil-regeneration for over seven years now.
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