In line with its commitment to enlarging societal value creation, ITC Ltd under its Social and Farm Forestry Initiative has greened over 77,000 hectares, creating an estimated potential for 35 million person days of employment among the disadvantaged. This has been highlighted in ITC’s 4th Sustainability Report released by the Company recently.

As part of this unique endeavour, ITC has invested in extensive R & D to create clonal saplings which are not only disease resistant but can grow in a shorter time cycle, even in wastelands and harsh conditions. These saplings are made available to tribals and marginal farmers, who utilise them to rear plantations on private wastelands, providing them with a means for sustainable livelihoods and supplementary incomes. This initiative of the ITC also helps in ensuring that India’s forest resource base is preserved and augmented, with fuelwood requirements of the rural poor households being met by the toppings/loppings of the additional plantations reared.

Besides converting private wastelands into productive assets and addressing critical issues relating to biomass depletion, soil erosion, water security, biodiversity and ecological balance, this initiative has also enabled ITC to sequester twice the amount of carbon emitted from its operations, contributing effectively to the national goals of climate change mitigation.

The Sustainability Report also highlights ITC’s milestones of being water positive 5 years in a row, carbon positive for 2 years and nearly zero solid waste discharge status, making it the only company in the world of its size to have achieved these landmark records. ITC has successfully created a positive footprint in rainwater harvesting where the potential created in 2006-07 is nearly 4 times the net water consumption of all operations. ITC’s exemplary initiative towards achieving a zero solid waste discharge status is demonstrated by the fact that more than 95% of all solid wastes have been recycled.

The Sustainability report, published now for the 4th consecutive year and in accordance with the stringent G3 Guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative, demonstrates ITC’s continued commitment to the triple bottom line objectives of contributing to building economic, social and ecological capital for the nation.