Mumbai, Maharashtra, India:  ACC Limited, one of India’s leading producers of cement and ready-mix concrete is the proud winner of the first Indian Circular Economy Awards (ICEA) 2019 in the Large Enterprise category instituted by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog handed the award to K N Rao, Director-Energy & Environment, ACC. The award recognised ACC’s notable contributions and impact in the area of Circular Economy and Sustainability.
 
ACC’s painstaking efforts to promote blended cements in India have resulted in 88% of its product portfolio comprising blended cements – the highest among the large cement producers in India. These blended cements make use of industrial waste materials such as slag and fly ash, thus reducing the usage of non-renewable natural resources such as limestone.
 
Thanking FICCI for this award, Neeraj Akhoury, Managing Director & CEO, said, “This award is unique in that it recognizes holistic performance in promoting circular thinking across an organisation’s operations. ACC is committed to building a greener, more sustainable India. A deep concern for conservation of the earth’s precious resources is integrated into all activities of our value chain from mining to sales. We make continuous investments in technology to improve energy efficiency, pollution control and environment management standards.”
 
Waste poses a major societal challenge. ACC promotes a circular economy by repurposing waste through material recycling and energy recovery. In doing so, we transform waste, create livelihood opportunities and offer solutions for waste management, all of which ensures a cleaner environment.
 
Through Geocycle, ACC is providing sustainable waste management solutions to Indian industry by co-processing waste in its cement kilns. By disposing off industrial, municipal and agricultural waste, we recover energy and material value from them, as well as help prevent harmful emissions that would have been generated had the waste been disposed through open burning or landfills. From packaging waste to soya husk to bio-sludge, in 2018, ACC co-processed ~0.38 mn tonnes of waste.
 
Through its Green Building Centres (GBC), ACC supports local entrepreneurs to make and distribute affordable building components and precast materials such as fly ash bricks, concrete tiles, paver tiles and sanitation units to promote sustainable rural development. In 2018, ACC consumed over 37,500 tonnes of fly ash in its GBC operations, resulting in conserving over 81,400 tonnes of topsoil and avoiding ~5,700 tonnes of equivalent CO₂ emissions.
 
ACC is the first cement company in India to complete the process of assessing and publishing a life-cycle-impact-assessment of its products through an Environment Product Declaration (EPD) for all its cement and concrete products.
 
At ACC, sustainability is a way of life. We continuously explore ways to make our business more planet-friendly; from deploying clean mining techniques to transforming used mines into lush forests or water bodies.