Guest Post by Dr. Hishmi Jamil Husain (Head Biodiversity Corporate Sustainability) on Sustainable best practices in the Steel industry

Tacit Knowledge Time to Read: 5 minutes

Currently, Dr Hishmi Jamil Husain is working with Tata Steel as Head Biodiversity Corporate Sustainability. Dr Hishmi is passionate about biodiversity conservation, caproate sustainability and sustainable development. With the euphoria of Environment month and World environment Day in this month; Done And Done interacts and interviews Dr Hishmi who shares the various methods, initiatives and efforts undertaken to ensure the steel is not just manufactured sustainably but is also reused post-production and sales in an environmentally conscious manner-a true example of circular economy at work.

Dr Hishmi is among the notable alumni of the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, the Hague, the Netherlands and Forest Research Institute, (FRI) Dehradun, India. He is Commission Member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) elected fellow of The Linnean Society of London and a life member of the Club of Rome. He was awarded the 2015 Young Scientist Award, 2016 Environment Scientist Award. He is on board several national and internal bodies. He is visiting faculty and distinguished speaker in India and abroad. Dr Hishmi has authored two books, several papers and more than 160 articles on his credit. With this depth in knowledge and global exposure, Done And Done explores sustainable initiatives in the steel industry. Following is the gist of the interview.

Q1. Sustainability is usually considered to be synonymous with CSR initiatives for environmental consciousness. I would also regard it as longevity and sustenance. What are the long-term methods the steel industry, per se have undertaken to ensure supply chains & production processes are sustainable?

Ans. The steel industry has undertaken life cycle thinking and embedded circular economy principles for achieving sustainability. The sustainability of supply chains and production processes is ensured by the following four steps:- 

Step1: Reduce, Reuse, Remanufacture and Recycle of material (Principles of Circular economy), 

Step 2: Replace waste and by-products as a resource, 

Step 3: to minimize the impact of price volatility for resources and 

Step 4: to minimize the impact on the environment.

Companies are investing in breakthrough technologies to achieve the highest environmental performance standards, efficient raw materials management, higher utilisation of slag, setting up the steel recycling business, achieving zero water discharge, carrying out lifecycle assessments of our products to understand their impact. We have policies and processes in place for reducing energy usage and minimising our environmental footprint across the value chain. Industries have set stringent targets for energy intensity, greenhouse gas emission, and water conservation. Efforts are also focused on reducing waste to enable a sustainable supply chain.

Technological interventions such as the HIsarna (energy conservation) process of steel making which reduces energy usage and cuts Co2 emissions by at least 1/5th of the conventional process which could go up to 80% through Carbon capture and storage employing Carbon capturing by re-using gases outputted from one process as an input to another process thereby reusing the by-products. Adoption of best available technologies for waste heat recovery such as top recovery turbine, coke dry quenching for energy efficiency. The use of an electric arc furnace for scrap recycling is the best technology to date.

Policy advocacy with various government and industry bodies to build scrap utilisation networks and setting stringent internal targets for emission reduction and water conservation.

Other important interventions are such use internal carbon pricing in the capital expenditure appraisal process with the shadow price of carbon at US$ 15 /tCO2 and use life cycle assessment as a tool to assess environmental impacts at the various stages of its products' lifecycle. In addition to the above stakeholder engagement through partnerships across the supply chain, such as with vendors, logistic partners, end consumers etc. are important actions. Recycles solid waste by-products into brands that are rich in iron and known for their tensile strength. To exemplify some products are used in the construction of buildings as rods.

Q2. How is the sustainability vision-driven across blue-collared workers to ensure its success? (Any particular campaigns/training that you wish to share)

Ans. Awareness and dissemination of information are very important to achieve success in sustainability. An important campaign such as Greenification, plantation drives, competitions is some of the ways to drive the sustainability vision across the length and breadth of the organization.

Q3. Firms have started to incorporate key metrics and track them at a P&L and Balance sheet level. How important do you think do ISO standards and similar CDP ratings etc. play in achieving these metrics?

Ans. ISO standard and CDP ratings are globally recognized international standards and ratings. CDP ratings are given based on the disclosure by companies which allows the organization to evaluate and grade the performance in terms of efforts taken by the firm to reduce the carbon footprint. Investors today are increasingly making their decisions based on the ESG factors and ratings like these effectively capture a firm's performance and help the investors compare and act. The standards aid in bringing transparency and consistency in the firm's efforts towards sustainability. These standard and ratings help the organization in benchmarking their performance against the industry peers and competition. All these give a push to the company to achieve the metrics year on year.

Q4. Have any Six Sigma initiatives been undertaken to reduce the Carbon footprint?

Ans. The key initiatives are taken to reduce the carbon footprint are forecasting the emissions based on the growth aspirations, benchmarking emissions vis-a-vis industry peers, setting targets, identifying and prioritising levers to achieve the targets, including energy efficiency measures. Implement Internal Carbon Pricing in our capital expenditure appraisal process. Use of by-products to reduce the waste and developing processes for utilization of low-quality materials in the production.

Q5. As a leader in steel processing and production-it being a major raw material commodity for even the automobile industry, what process changes have been undertaken to ensure the raw material itself is an eco-friendly product, given it isn't bio-degradable?

Ans. Companies are working on Green Steel production through a patented process called HISARNA. Companies are working on incorporating technologies like electric arc furnace and Direct Reduced Iron in the steel making process to reduce their emissions. Use of scrap. Waste heat recovery through Top Recovery Turbine, Coke Dry Quenching for energy efficiency.

Q6. What are the different reverse logistics or the various end of life cycle management steps undertaken to ensure the least damage to the environment?

Ans. Scrap recycling through Electric Arc Furnace is one of the processes undertaken by the companies. Use of scrap as one of the inputs in the steel making process. Tata Steel has set up a recycling unit of 0.5 MnTPA capacity in Rohtak, Haryana.

Q7. Lastly, what is your vision in the correlation between the era we are in - a digital age, 21st century and cut to the chase where we are working in manufacturing environments. Do you think there is a disparity between the conditions, adoption of technology and other basic principles in the plants? How do you think can sustainability (longevity) be introduced for best practices?

Ans No. The manufacturing plants are catching up with the digital age technology as well. World Economic Forum (WEF) Lighthouse, a network that spotlights leaders of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) has recently recognized TATA steel's Kalinganagar plant in Odisha and Ijmuiden plant in the Netherlands for using advanced analytics as a tool to create business value. In India, Tata Steel Kalainganagar is the only one with the honour of being a WEF Lighthouse. The biggest challenges involve scaling-up of the data architecture, fast-changing operating regimes, lack of adequate data and talent pool. But with enough push from leadership and training, it is achievable. It has been using 4IR deployments such as connected workforce, video analytics, Maintenance technology roadmap, advanced analytics, Operations research-based optimisation, Plant shutdown optimisation tool, AI-powered chatbots, Robotic process automation and digital platforms.

For sustainability, companies are now focused on the modularity of data and technology architecture and creation of access to data; implementation of newer 4IR technologies like predictive solutions in equipment reliability, exploring shop-floor schedulers and robotics and automation in safety-risk areas; improving the models' techniques to become self-learning models, with no need of re-training; and building an in-house world-class team of data scientists, translators and data engineers to sustain digital efforts.

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