As the world’s climate begins to change, no company can afford any longer to ignore the impact it has on the environment. GPIC has committed itself to some of the most stringent of standards when it comes to environmental management because it believes that the way any organisation manages environmental issues is a crucial measure of its standards of corporate social responsibility, competitiveness and vision.
Our environmental management model is founded on the basic concept of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and is seamlessly aligned to the company’s triple bottom line approach to business sustainability.
We have adopted a multi-pronged strategy with respect to managing our environmental footprint and have prioritized our investments accordingly .
Throughout the life cycle of our products and operations, we aim to manage environmental impacts.
An environmental impact study and review at the design stage is carried out for all minor and major projects as well as engineering modifications. We identify environmental impacts and seek to avoid them or minimize them. Any gaps or concerns highlighted as part of the environmental impact study are addressed to ensure an environmentally sustainable project.
We believe that by operating the plants in an efficient and reliable manner with minimum production interruptions and down-time the environmental impacts from our operations will be minimum. Hence to achieve this we invest on reliability, state of the art technology and equipment and training and development of our employees.
As a part of our responsible operations we actively monitor our gas emissions ,liquid effluents and waste generation and have initiated several measures to reduce our carbon footprint and improve our overall environmental footprint.
We ensure that we are maximizing the efficiency of our resource utilization of everything from water to energy to raw materials to minimize wastage from our manufacturing processes, and make our facilities greener and more eco-friendly. We strive to be energy efficient and maintain our specific energy consumption per ton of saleable product as low as possible.
We ensure regulatory compliance to applicable environmental laws and legislations. This important aspect is embedded in our policies.
Furthermore we benchmark ourselves against some of the highest global standards by pursuing internationally recognized certifications such as the EMS ISO 14001, Responsible Care RC 14001, ISO 50001 and others. We also participate in global benchmarking surveys such as International Fertilizer Association(IFA) Environmental Benchmark. We also participate in various Environmental Awards with an intent to benchmark ourselves with the best in class.
In addition to internal audits our facilities are frequently audited by third parties to ensure that we are holding ourselves to the standards we have committed ourselves to.
We are also actively engaged in inculcating a culture of environmental responsibility amongst our people and the community. This is sustained by training our employees and providing them with skills, competencies and empowerment to continuously improve, as they are the key to the success in implanting HSE best practices.
Our production site now hosts; a fish farm where about 100,000 sea bream fish are released into the deep sea annually to enrich marine life, a bird sanctuary which hosts birds of different species, mangroves plantation and a number of gardens specifically made to plant rare indigenous, aromatic and desert plants to form a case study for educating school students on environmental natural presentation.
At GPIC, in line with our business principles of sustainability, coupled with responsible care and corporate social responsibility ethics, our strategy of environmental management goes beyond our facilities. Our Responsible Operations strategy ensures that we do not impact adversely on our neighbouring communities. The key goal is to manage our business processes to produce an overall positive impact on society.
In an era of global climate change, GPIC greenhouse gas emissions, as well as its carbon footprint, are one of the biggest challenges we face when trying to invest in environmental sustainability.
GPIC has been able to implement some projects such as the urea plant and the carbon dioxide recovery plant that have reduced the company’s carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon Dioxide Recovery( CDR) plant commissioned in 2009, captures 450 MT/Day of CO2 from methanol reformer flue gases and recycles back to produce more urea and methanol. Hence reducing the Company’s carbon footprint in addition to resource efficiency and production augmentation. This project is a best example of how GPIC combines business strategy with environmental sustainability.
As required by the Paris Climate Agreement and part of the National GHG Inventory, GPIC uses the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines and software to estimate its GHG emissions and report the same to the regulators on annual basis.
Some of the GPIC’s significant environmental impacts can occur during the sourcing of raw material, manufacturing process, transport, delivery, use and final disposal of its product or service. By providing information, GPIC can potentially prevent or mitigate adverse environmental impacts during these life cycle stages. GPIC considers the extent of control or influence that it can exert over activities, products and services considering a life cycle perspective.
In September 2015, 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to make our world more prosperous, inclusive, sustainable and resilient. These SDGs represent an unprecedented opportunity for companies such as ours, to align their own sustainability goals with the broader societal aspirations at hand.
Environment domain is expanded in the SDGs and the environmental dimension of sustainable development is fully fleshed out in the goals on oceans and marine resources, ecosystems and biodiversity, land degradation and desertification, and are also mainstreamed/embedded under all other goals. Almost half of the SDGs are directly related to the Environment.
GPIC has proactively started aligning its business priorities with the SDGs and as part of this journey have shown contribution to a number of SDGs including the ones related to the Environment.
In addition to the commitment and responsibilities GPIC has for its own operations, we are engaged in environmental efforts at several levels, Creating Impact, efforts for environmental sustainability and stewardship. One of these examples are our commitment to the UN Global Compact 10 Principles including the three principles on environmental sustainability and also the UN Global Compact Food and Agriculture Business Principles( FAB 6) where Principle number 2 is to be Environmentally Responsible.
We take environmental stewardship very seriously and in this context we are the joint Sponsors of the yearly RoSPA International Dilmun Environmental Award that is given to the companies with outstanding Environmental management system.
GPIC is a member of the UN Global Compact and is committed to the support and implementation of the Global Compact’s 10 principles including principle no. 7, 8 and 9 on environmental sustainability.
-We can be never be certain that an economic activity has positive or at least neutral effects on sustainability and when we are not certain of the impacts we follow a precuationary approach.
- We think before we act and carryout an Environmental impact assessment for any significant change.
-We have well defined roles and responsibilities when it comes to policy making and goals setting. The risks and opportunities with regards to environmental sustainability are assessed in a structured way through risk assessments.
- Whenever we go for a new equipment or a plant we always assess the potential environmental, social and economic impacts( adverse and positive) and cover all the aspects including the following