Jul 20
Meals on Wheels
Meals on Wheels
EACH day, seven eye-catching, specially designed vehicles leave a central kitchen in Surat. Branching out their separate ways, each heads towards designated government schools, which they must reach before lunchtime. The vehicles carry piping hot, hygienically prepared food to liberate the children from malnutrition, helping to enhance the learning process.
 
These mid-day meal vans have been donated by L&T-MHI Power Boilers (LMB) to the Akshaya Patra Foundation. They help the Foundation to sustain its mid-day meal initiative, under the aegis of the Gujarat Government.
 
The vans were flagged off on 27 April by Mr Srinivas Sirupa (Chief Executive & Whole-time Director – LMB) in the presence of Mr Atik Desai, (VP & Chief Administrative Officer – A M Naik Heavy Engineering Complex, Hazira), Mr R M Hashim (VP & Head of Manufacturing – LMB) and other senior officials of LMB and Akshaya Patra Foundation.
 
Through these gifts, LMB made its humble contribution to two Sustainable Development Goals – zero hunger and quality education.
 
CAMPS COOL
 
Happy, confident children grow up to become independent, sociable adults. To facilitate this delightful outcome, L&T’s A M Naik Heavy Engineering Complex (AMNHEC) at Hazira in Gujarat, organised ‘Rainbow’ summer camps at 23 rural and urban schools.
 
Organised between 25 April and 26 May, the camps benefitted 1396 disadvantaged students. One of the camps, at Amity School at Limbayat in Surat was inaugurated by Mr Atik Desai (VP & Chief Administrative Officer – AMNHEC) in the presence of Ms Sangita Patil (MLA – Limbayat constituency), Dr Jayant Patel (Head, Environment, Health & Safety – AMNHEC) and Ms Alpa Patel (AGM, CSR – AMNHEC).
 
True to their name, the camps offered a spectrum of activities – spoken English & personality development, computer basics, drawing & craft, mehndi art, indoor and outdoor games. The activities gave the children an exciting opportunity to explore and learn new skills and become independent and self-confident, while socialising and forging new friendships.
 
Initiatives like this help uplift underprivileged children by widening their horizons. On the last day of the camp at Mahadev Shastri Vidyalaya at Olpad, L&T volunteers conducted joyous team-building activities for the students. This was followed by awarding of certificates for attending the camps.

Jul 20
Pruning Plastic
Pruning Plastic
MILLIONS of tonnes of plastic, swirling around the world’s oceans, are cooking up  the  proverbial  storm.  Plastic pollution poses a big threat to plants, animals, and human beings. The impact of microplastics in soils, sediments and freshwater can have a long-term negative effect.
 
Keeping this in mind, eight project sites of L&T’s Water & Effluent Treatment (WET) arm have taken several steps to lower plastic pollution. The projects include the Pune elevated surface reservoir and ground service reservoir project, the Pune 24x7 water supply packages – 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, Gujarat’s Brahmani water resources project and the Navda-to-Chavand bulk pipeline project.
 
The sites are on a mission to transform construction waste to usable material, reduce reliance on single-use plastic and increase the utilisation of recycled plastic. Their collective effort to use plastic waste is both economically beneficial and offers alternative materials for construction.
 
RECYCLE & REUSE
 
Various methods are used to handle plastic waste in an environment-friendly way. At one site, it is collected daily and handed over to agencies for recycling and producing by-products for further use.
 
At others, it is recycled into polyfuel and used in boilers, cement factories, steel mills, glass factories, etc. as substitute for diesel, coal, or wood. Due to its low sulphur content, polyfuel is cleaner than traditional fuels and can be directly used in kerosene stoves, boilers, furnaces, certain types of gensets and the like. The residual char produced is non-hazardous waste.
 
Then, plastic waste is also being recycled into plastic granules which are used in compression moulding, highly reinforced composites, powder coating and 3D printing.
 
PEOPLE BUY-IN
 
The success of an initiative is in the buy-in from the workforce. WET conducts site-specific training, as well as courses in areas such as environment management resource-based theory and waste management. Waste collection and segregation are conducted on a periodic basis to minimise waste accumulation at sites and keep work areas neat and orderly.
 
Regular housekeeping and waste minimisation campaigns help keep aisles and floors slip-free and remove waste materials and other fire hazards.
 
BENEFITS OF RECYCLING
 
Each tonne of plastics produces approximately:
 
• 600 to 650 litres of polyfuel
 
• 20%–25% synthetic gas – used in the process
 
• 5% –10% moisture
 
• 5% –10% residual char – can be used as road-filler with bitumen
 
ENERGY CONSERVATION: Recycling a tonne of plastic saves energy equal to 5,774 kWh. That’s equivalent to the amount of energy consumed by two people for a year.
 
REDUCED PETROLEUM USE: Around 40% of oil consumption can be reduced through recycling plastic waste. That’s 16.3 barrels of oil per tonne of recycled plastic.
 
CO2 EMISSION REDUCTION: Reduced oil consumption means reduced emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted during the production of plastic.
 
REDUCED LANDFILL USE: Fewer plastic in landfills means less emission of common landfill gases like CO2 and methane. Both gases affect life through the ground and air, causing public health problems and environmental damage.
 
COLLABORATING WITH COMMUNITIES
 
The ‘Go Green’ drive is strengthened by taking the message to the communities in the vicinity of the projects, in the form of awareness sessions and strategic cleaning campaigns for schools and homes.
 
The Navda-to-Chavand project undertakes plastic collection drives from families of employees and workmen, and cleaning drives at schools, parks, and ponds so to create awareness about environmental issues. The waste collected is handed over to recycling agencies.
 
At the Brahmani project, plans are afoot to augment the plastic collection and cleaning drives for communities around the project sites. The target is to create an effective after-use plastics economy which will create more material value and increase resource productivity.
 
Ensuring that plastic doesn’t pollute the environment requires a coordinated effort to improve collection systems and recovery infrastructure. And that’s what L&T’s project sites focus upon.
Jul 20
Enabling Enlightenment
Enabling Enlightenment
A pleasant school environment enhances learning experience and help retain students. This is especially true of rural areas, where the dropout rate is high, largely due to socio-economic factors.
 
With this in mind, L&T Smart World & Communication (L&T SWC) has repaired and renovated five rural government schools in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra under its CSR drive.
 
The schools renovated in Tamil Nadu are Avathipalayam Government Higher Secondary School (Namakkal district), Adi Dravidar Government Primary School (Chengalpattu district) and George Higher Secondary School (Tiruvarur District). The beneficiary schools in Maharashtra are Walni Village Grampanchayat School (Nagpur) and ZP Primary School, Bhukum (Pune).
 
The renovation works undertaken in 2021- 2022 were many and varied. It included structural strengthening, waterproofing, replastering, and re-roofing. Transforming the look from drab to decorative by artistic paintings on the walls elevated the mood of the children and made school something to eagerly look forward to each day.
 
Taking a significant step towards facilitating women’s education, girls’ toilets were also built in some schools and renovated in others. The amount spent on all these initiatives totalled Rs 60 lakh and they have benefitted 3,090 children.
 
What’s more, subsequent to the renovations, admissions in those schools rose by about 10%. In fact, so high was the appreciation for the renovated Avathipalayam school that it received admission applications from parents whose children were studying in private schools.
 
Jul 20
Shades of Green
Shades of Green
GLOBAL warming is real, and all living things are facing this dire threat. A clarion call has been sounded to alert everyone everywhere of the necessity to combat climate change – before it’s too late.
 
The team at L&T’s globally benchmarked A M Naik Heavy Engineering Complex (AMNHEC) at Hazira in Gujarat marked the World Environment Day with a slew of initiatives to green the campus.
 
A mass afforestation drive saw 400+ staffers plant over 750 native trees – banyan, Indian lilac (neem), sacred fig (peepal), and cluster fig (udumbar) – across a 4,000 sq metre parcel of unutilised land. The tree species were selected for their high oxygen-generation capacity.
 
There was another initiative. To nurture the many and varied species of beautiful birds that flock to the campus, 250 birdhouses, food feeders and water sippers were installed across AMNHEC.
 
The management has plans to create an urban forest within AMNHEC by increasing the afforested area in phases. On the cards are tree transplantation and a new recharging pond, which will support the ecosystem.
 
BOOSTING CSR
 
The reach of welfare activities under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be widened by training fresh hands. And who can impart such training better than the ones who have developed expertise in CSR initiatives.
 
Holding this view, the Vadodara-based CSR team of L&T Energy – Hydrocarbon (LTEH) on 30 April conducted a session on best CSR practices for the students of ‘Certificate Course in CSR’ at the Faculty of Social Work at M S University of Baroda. This was on invitation by the university.
 
The session was attended by over 100 people that included students, research scholars and CSR practitioners. The LTEH team, comprising Ms Digantika Ghosh and Mr Kaushal Parmar, shared insights on the impactful CSR initiatives that they have designed and implemented both in urban and rural areas.
 
Prior to this, on 27 April, the team demonstrated their Paida Ni Pathshala (school on wheels) project at the varsity campus.
 
The best practices session and the demonstration helped the students and research scholars gain practical understanding of the CSR spectrum. This will, hopefully, help touch and transform the lives of many more underprivileged people.
 

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