Reliance Industries: Pioneering Environmental Stewardship
As India’s largest company by market capitalisation, Reliance Industries, through its environmental policy, reaffirms the conglomerate’s commitment to the environment across all its diversified sectors.
Its environmental policy stresses compliance with all regulator requirements and lays aid down in various regulations, approvals, amendments, and internal standards.
Environmental Management
Based on the company’s vision of clean and green development, RIL has set itself a target to become net carbon zero by 2035.
The company’s oil to chemicals business deploys several energy conservation solutions using next-generation digital technologies. It has integrated Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine Learning (ML) solutions in oil fields, repurposed pet-coke gasification to utilise synthesis gas to produce chemicals and hydrogen and generated synthesis gas on a renewable basis through biomass gasification. The company has deployed RCAT (Hydrothermal Liquefaction HTL technology) to achieve its net carbon zero goal.
Reliance Industries uses a vendor-managed inventory for select categories, has long-term agreements with packaging suppliers, conducts joint programmes with vendors, and reduces system costs to ensure sustainable supplier collaborations.
Reliance Industries has registered eight Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These projects are related to energy efficiency, renewable energy and cleaner fuels. The company has built an in-house capacity to develop CDM projects and obtain the registration and issuance of the same in the form of Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) from the UNFCCC.
The company is committed to maximising biofuel use and using bio-pathways to fix CO2 and facilitate conversion to renewable fuels and materials. It is also scaling up the recycling of materials and maximising circularity across the value chains.
Reliance Industries recycles over 2 billion PET bottles yearly to make Recron GreenGold polyester staple fibre. Reliance is also developing green polyolefin products, which are sustainable packaging solutions for non-food and non-pharma applications. Additionally, RIL is developing commercial-scale continuous catalytic pyrolysis technology, which can convert unsegregated mixed waste plastics into pyrolysis oil, which is further processed at the refinery.
The company’s R&D team and the sustainability solutions team in the Reliance-Petchem business have developed an innovative product called ReRoute for hard-to-recycle end-of-life plastic, which is used in preparing roads. The R&D team has also developed net bags and bag-on-roll applications using biodegradable plastic, which have been tested at Reliance Retail stores.
Diversity & Inclusion
The Reliance Group’s DEI charter was launched by Isha Ambani, affirming Reliance’s unwavering commitment to the values of DEI. Reliance Retail has implemented two significant flagship programmes, Jagriti and Pragati, to enable women employees to grow to managerial roles at stores. Reliance Retail’s ‘Sahakari Bhandar’ has employed close to 100 differently-abled boys and girls under the programme Saksham, transforming their lives from training to employment and engagement.
Corporate Governance
An Ethics and Compliance Task Force (ECTF) comprising the Reliance Group’s Executive Director (Chairman, ECTF), General Counsel, Group Controller and President – Group Corporate Secretarial and Governance has been established to oversee and monitor the implementation of ethical business practices within Reliance. All ECTF complaints and incidents are reviewed and reported to the Audit Committee quarterly.
