STL Receives ‘Zero Waste to Landfill’ Certification
STL today announced Zero Waste to Landfill (ZWL) for all its optical fibre and cable facilities across India and Italy. Earlier In 2020, STL became the world's first optical fibre and cable manufacturer to attain the ZWL certificate for its Indian plants in Maharashtra, India. Since then, the company has improved its waste diversion rate and extended these best practices to its remaining plants in India and Optical cable and interconnect facilities in Italy. This makes STL’s optical solutions one of the most sustainable across India and Europe.
The World Bank predicts that annual waste generation will increase by 73% to 3.88 billion tonnes by 2050. STL’s 'Zero Waste to Landfill' initiatives, a part of the company's larger goal to be Net-Zero by 2030 aim to repurpose ~99% of the industrial byproducts back into the production cycle. Since 2018, STL has diverted 1,75,000+ Metric Tonnes (MT) of waste away from landfills, including 42,000+ MT in FY22.
Commenting on this achievement, Akanksha Sharma, Global Head ESG, STL, said, “As a global optical technology leader, with customers in over 100 countries, effective and efficient waste management is our top priority. This feat of Zero Waste to Landfill for all our operational plants will go a long way in building a ‘greener’ value chain for optical products.
STL’s ZWL approach includes various industry-first initiatives like co-processing of optical fibre cables and LSZH (Low-Smoke-Zero-Halogen) wastes, purification of chemical by-products for industrial usages and precision water management, among other initiatives. STL has also moved to sustainable packaging called S.U.R.E (Sustainable, User-Friendly, Reliable, and Efficient) to reduce overall carbon emissions in the fibre lifecycle.
