CB BureauAs part of ITC’s Waste out of Wealth (WOW) initiative, the Papers and
Speciality Papers Division (PSPD) of the company has brought together 20 major
corporate groups, including Infosys, Google, Microsoft, Mahindra Satyam, and Dr.
Reddy’s, to effectively recycle waste paper and generate monetary and social
value through it.
PSPD’s Chief Executive Sanjay Singh confirmed that the group
has converted its CSR activity into a business plan. ‘By linking CSR activity into the overall
business plan, we ensure it gets greater focus and we have something to look
forward to by the company. Both the farm forestry and WOW initiative have now
been linked,’ Singh informed.
Singh told media representatives at a conference that within a short span of
introducing the initiative, the collection of dry waste is touching
about 4,000 metric tonnes a month. The figure is likely to go up to 6,000 metric
tonnes a month during the current financial year. Singh confirmed that the
company will try covering entire South India and hopes to pick up over
15,000 metric tonnes of waste for recycling.
The company’s representative at the conference confirmed that 20
corporate groups with over 200,000 employees have agreed to join the WOW initiative for
segregation and collection of waste paper for recycling.
Although ITC launched WOW in 2007 as a social activity in a
small way, it is looking at spreading its wings now after giving it the shape of
a business.
In this programme, other than the corporate groups, WOW
reaches out to schools, institutions and homes through its awareness-building
teams, disseminating information on source segregation of waste. After a stipulated period of time, a WOW
team goes back to collect the waste kept aside by these organizations and pays
them for the recyclables collected.
WOW has been recognized by Bureau of International
Recycling (BIR), a worldwide international trade federation representing
the world’s recycling industry, promoting recycling across the globe.