The Sustainable Water Resource Management (SWAR) project, covered by AO in 16-31 October issue, which has been operational since February 2013, has successfully concluded its Phase-I. The project instituted in collaboration with Swedish retailers INDISKA, KappAhl and Lindex along with Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) and Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) has demonstrated how efficient resource management leads to substantial environmental improvements and financial gains.
“The SWAR project showed that sustainability and profit can go hand in hand and in an industry facing fierce global competition with very small margins, being more resource efficient can lead to triple wins: win for the company, win for society and win for the environment. Most importantly is that these fiscal and environmental results have led to a mind-shift towards profitable resource conservation,” informs Rami Abdelrahman, Programme Officer, Knowledge Services and SWAR Project Coordinator, SIWI. Interestingly, the textile sector in India is the second largest contributor to industrial waste in the country and through the SWAR initiative, Swedish retailers brought together 35 suppliers in Delhi and Jaipur aiming for a more sustainable development of the industry towards water resource management.
Recommendations provided by cKinetics, an Indian sustainability acceleration consultancy that implemented the project in India, includes applying best-practices such as chemical dyeing procedures, house-hold savings, rainwater harvesting, effective waste water treatment and reuse, as well as efficient boiler heating cycles. “Over the period of one year we have worked and built relationships with all participants with the purpose of solving resource consumption constraints by using both ‘managerial’ and ‘technical’ systemic processes,” claims Harsh Sheth, Senior Associate, cKinetics.
In Delhi, the project partners implemented 85 different recommendations suggested by SWAR which led to a 765 per cent return on investment in a year and an average payback time of 11 days per project. Further, the project enabled reduction of total water consumption by an annual 84.5 million litres of 6.6 per cent, electricity use by 3.4 per cent, fuel by 4 per cent and chemicals by 14 per cent at suppliers and sub-suppliers levels which resulted in an annual 1.7 per cent saving in production costs for all 35 units. “SWAR has been an eye opener for us and has been a learning platform for resource efficiency measures. We have already started implementing some of the projects suggested to us in our other factories as well,” asserts Gopal Singh of Sargam Exports.
While in Jaipur, the project together with the traditional block-printers at the Jaipur Industrial Texcraft Park (Jaipur Bloc) not only developed a guidebook for sustainable resource use in their industry but also built capacities at the park to prepare them for environment-friendly production. SWAR had also trained more than 60 per cent of all staff on the sustainable use of water, energy and chemicals in both Jaipur and Delhi. “SWAR has been much more effective than other resource management projects that we have undertaken that has gone beyond giving paper reports and has actually helped implement projects,” says Mukesh Tomar of Maya Exports.
Going further, the SWAR partners will continue their collaboration with Indian textile industries during 2014 to expand the project’s positive impact. “In 2014, we welcomed a new batch of suppliers to Swedish brands, who will go through the same process as in 2013. For those continuing from last year, we will identify new projects for implementation at each unit to build on the success of last year. Also in 2014 we’re looking forward to come to India again to meet with different stakeholders to identify areas for engagement for the future,” concludes Rami.
