With the pandemic setting unprecedented challenges initially for businesses to function seamlessly; transitioning to more sustainable business models have managed to revive growth, build resource-effective systems; create value for stakeholders, the environment, and communities by and large. The circular economy model has proven to offer measurable impact to businesses as it is restorative, regenerative by design, and effectively manages to utilize materials, energy even within a digitally-enabled business.

The cement industry is a key contributor to India’s circular economy. Serving as a backbone to many waste-generating industries, cement manufacturers have managed to convert climate risks around waste into business opportunities thereby bolstering growth and offering stakeholder benefits across the value chain.

At Holcim India, sustainability is at the heart of our business strategy and as a responsible corporate, we aspire to be the leader and set new standards in sustainable construction. The aim is to transform the way our industry works and encourage the whole construction sector to play its part in addressing our planet’s biggest issues.

As operating entities in India, Ambuja Cements Limited and ACC Limited have built their sustainable development ambitions on global standards and aligned with Holcim’s sustainability strategy. Both these organizations have taken several CO₂ reduction measures such as clinker factor reduction, thermal substitution rate, thermal & electrical energy efficiency, renewable energy, and adoption of new technologies.

Through its in-house waste management solutions brand, Geocycle, both Ambuja Cements and ACC have successfully managed to feed millions of tons of waste within their operations to improve their Thermal Substitution Rate.

In 2020, Ambuja Cements cut down 33,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions through the use of Waste Heat Recovery System (WHRS) against 32,000 tonnes in 2019. Similarly ACC, over the last three years, has produced an average of around 50 million units a year of green energy from WHRS. The thermal substitution rate over these three years also continued to improve from 4.47% in 2018 to 6.93% in 2020.

As we think circular, the prime objective is to preserve the resources available to us and substitute them with waste or by-products. Taking cues from the cement industry in India, there are four key imperatives towards creating a circular economy within your industry –

• Focus on Closing the Loop:  Companies should move from a “Take-Make-Use-Dispose” linear model to a “Take-Make-Use-Recover” circular model by focusing on closed-loop recycling within their value chain. Re-evaluating one’s production processes offers a plethora of opportunities to contribute towards solving society’s waste problem through waste reuse and recycling. This circular loop can be closed either by direct reuse of products, through partial reuse by refurbishing or traditional recycling, or through biodegradability. The Indian cement industry contributes to circular thinking by managing various kinds of waste –steel industry slag, fly ash, municipal solid waste (MSW), and plastic waste.

• Enabling End-to-End Resource Efficiency:  Companies must ensure that the circular offerings contribute to resolving environment and societal impact not just by reducing new resource extraction through reparability but also through local production and utilisation of renewable energies. While using recycled materials for applications help reduce impact, this at times may risk increasing its environmental impact due to gaps in the value chain. For instance, if recycled concrete aggregates are not available close to the construction site, then the environmental impact of transporting them could be greater. Hence, companies need to look at the end-to-end resource utilisation across the value chain.

• Re-inventing business practices:  With a raging pandemic, there have been tremendous disruptions within the existing supply chains with the additional threat of climate change and a growing scarcity of raw materials. Manufacturers are shifting towards building resilient business models through the incorporation of sustainability and adopting the CE model. For instance, Ambuja Cements provides state-of-the-art sustainable waste management services to other industries & waste generators, using municipal, agriculture, and mixed industrial waste as an alternative fuel for their cement kiln. This helps create an efficient supply chain that consumes less energy, uses fewer resources, and produces less waste.

• Partnering for enabling circular economy:  Companies must look beyond their operations to engage their partners and customers in the wider effort to conserve the planet’s finite resources. For improving the loop, companies need to evaluate their circular practices, as well as their partner’s production processes and customer activities to understand the ecological footprint along the entire loop. Organisations such as National Council for Cement and Building Materials (NCB) have played a pivotal role in enabling cement companies to enhance their waste utilization and sustainable manufacturing for clean and green India.

Businesses and state governments can create significant impact by stepping up and ramping their waste management efforts by changing their traditional linear model of growth and replacing it strategically with the circular economy model to fortify their growth story and build resilience through sustainable innovations. Research by the Ellen McArthur foundation suggests that embedding a circular economy in India’s development strategy will not only help reduce the troubling issue of waste management, it will also provide health and economic benefits to its citizens with the country likely to receive annual benefits worth 40 lakh crore (US$ 624 billion) by 2050. While the circular model is not enough to resolve all the current global challenges at hand, from a value-preserving standpoint, the circularity model is a powerful tool that can help accelerate towards a sustainable future.