Firms warm up to green ways on Kovai-Tirupur belt

Coimbatore: Many companies in the Manchester of South India are beginning to go green. At least 20 companies in the Coimbatore-Tirupur belt have got GreenCo ratings in the past two and half years, and another 20 companies have applied for ratings and are in the process of being evaluated, according to data with the CII’s GreenCo mission.
They attribute this trend to many multinational clients based from the United States and Europe looking only to employ environment-friendly companies.
The GreenCo mission was launched by the Confederation of Indian Industries in 2012 to make industries improve their efforts to save natural resources. While Greenco rating system was launched in the country in 2012, and Brakes India’s Sholingur unit became the first company from Tamil Nadu managed to get Greenco rated in 2013, the western region seemed slow to wake up to the trend. While Kirloskar Brothers got its manufacturing unit in Karumathampatti certified in 2014 along with the rest of their units, the rest of the region seemed to jump on to the bandwagon in 2017. “It was around 2017-’18 that Coimbatore-based industries like LMW, KG Fabrics and many garment exporters in Tirupur began applying for GreenCo ratings and achieving them,” counsellor for the climate change and environment sustainability division of CII, Chennai, Hirin Prashanth said.
Of the 20 companies that have got Greenco ratings in Coimbatore-Tirupur belt, five of them are from Coimbatore. “In and around Tirupur, there is a surge in garment manufacturers applying for the ratings, because many of their buyers and clients from Europe and the US have begun asking for environment sustainability certificates from their suppliers,” Prashanth said. At least another 20 companies are in the process of being certified in the belt, he said.
Applying for GreenCo ratings involves showing your company’s efforts to become more environment friendly in the last three years and efforts taken after applying for the rating. “We have teams to first train the company on ways to become more environment-friendly and then six to eight months later, an assessment team to assess their improvement efforts. It includes changes like fitting pumps with more energy efficient motors, fitting water efficient taps, setting up a sewage treatment plant, reducing overall energy consumption, among others,” Prashanth said.
Speaking at the one-day conference on Green Manufacturing conducted by CII on Thursday, chairman of the CII GreenCo forum Unni Nayar said currently 285 companies across the country are rated and certified. “We target increasing the number to 1,000 by 2022,” he said. He also said it was encouraging to see many public-sector units like the railways, getting their units like the Integral Coach Factory in Perambur, green certified.