Social responsibility as a corporate ‘mantra’ no longer works on the ‘wow’ appeal. Some have pledged social responsibility that goes beyond the mandate of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Corporate Citizen discusses ecoinitiatives that United Breweries Ltd. (UBL) has set forth to include in its ’agenda of becoming water-neutral by 2025’ as part of its sustainable development initiatives. Shekhar Ramamurthy, Managing Director, UBL, says, “Our company firmly believes in sustainable development, which is interpreted as growing your business in a socially and environmentally responsible way, while meeting the legitimate interests of stakeholders.” He reiterates that UBL’s CSR programme began over 10 years back, long before the government mandate and that it is imbibed within the company’s ideology. The UBL has been spearheading its work around the themes of drinking water, health and primary education and its programmes are being implemented on large-scale interventions for the last two years
Shekhar Ramamurthy: Our CSR activities are designed around the areas of water, education and health. Being mindful of our national development goals, UBL chooses the themes and issues that are pertinent to our business from a social perspective. The CSR activities are primarily focused on areas of water, sanitation and hygiene; education; primary health and environmental sustainability.
Under this theme, we have a customised approach towards meeting the needs of the people. Through our ‘safe drinking water programme’, we have so far implemented it in 25 villages across five of our breweries in Karnataka, Telangana and Maharashtra.
We have been successful in providing safe drinking water to nearly 65,000 individuals, in collaboration with non-profit partners. Launched in 2015, the ambitious safe drinking water programme commits to providing safe drinking water to 6,00,000 people by 2020. Another similar project is underway in Haryana wherein we would be able to reach out to nearly 30,000 individuals.
For regions that have been drought-prone or have insufficient water, we have invested our efforts in water conservation to supplement the efforts of the communities in meeting their basic water requirements. These initiatives have been implemented in the states of Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. We have an ambitious goal of being water-neutral by 2025, and these initiatives will contribute towards our effort of being ‘water-positive’.
UBL aspires to be water-positive by 2025. In addition to implementing rainwater harvesting and watershed management projects in and around our breweries, we recycle treated wastewater within the breweries.
These efforts are not limited to our breweries alone. We make extensive efforts in generating public awareness on the adaption of rainwater harvesting practices and incorporation of the necessary infrastructure. Our water conservation efforts are underway in Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana. By March 2017, we have recharged about 31% of all the freshwater that we consume.
"Our initiative not only provides safe drinking water but also helps reduce expenditure on healthcare incurred due to these diseases. We aspire to bring in a behavioural change by introducing such initiatives"
We at UBL believe in a more global model of implementing our CSR initiatives. While we do not have any foundation under UBL, we have dedicated employees who work back with the NGOs in ensuring effective implementation of the CSR projects. We leverage on the strengths of our NGO partners and work together to plan, implement and monitor the projects.
Our CSR initiatives are focused on improving the lives of communities in a 5-10 km radius of our breweries. This enables us to stay connected with the communities with more ease and helps us understand their needs better. Our personnel at the breweries invest considerable amount of time in building a relationship with the community and this is facilitated by the fact that our focus is on the communities residing around our breweries.
Prior to our safe drinking water initiatives, the communities consumed water directly from the source without filtering it. Consequently, the incidences of water-borne disease were high among them. Our initiative not only provides safe drinking water but also helps reduce expenditure on healthcare incurred due to these diseases. We aspire to bring in a behavioural change by introducing such initiatives. Additionally, our water conservation efforts have not only contributed to the environment, but have also helped over 2,000 farmers take multiple crops in the year due to increased availability of water for irrigation.
Our CSR initiatives are spread across different geographies and we partner with reputed NGOs for implementing them. We strongly believe that the regional/local NGOs are better equipped at working with the community and ensuring better reception and participation from them.
UBL and its employees are committed to the community it works with and the environment it extracts its resources from. In our endeavour to peacefully coexist with the communities residing in our vicinity, many of whom are contract labourers in our breweries, we make an attempt to understand the stress factors existing in those communities, especially those related to availability of water. We work with the community in addressing their deficits in order to grow together. Besides, we become partner in their development.
We have made deliberate attempts at reducing our dependence on fossil fuels in our effort to conserve the environment. All our breweries use agricultural waste like rice husk, bagasse, sawdust, coconut shell, and groundnut shell and soya husk to operate the steam boiler. By March 2016, we were able to use agricultural waste for 85% of our fuel requirements and we are striving towards achieving a 100% in this aspect.
The Manufacturing team handles the introduction of renewable energy for UBL. Since we work on a BOOT (Build, Own, Operate, and Transfer) model, we liaise with statutory agencies through the partners with whom UBL enters into a power purchase agreement (PPA).
The capital subsidy given by the Central Government for setting up of solar power plants was withdrawn long ago by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). However, the accelerated depreciation of 80% for the first year on the assets was the driving force behind recent solar power investments. Subsequently, in the recent budget, the Central government has reduced the accelerated depreciation benefits to 40% from 80% from 1st April 2017. Apart from this, there are no tax benefits for investment in solar energy.
"In addition to implementing rainwater harvesting and watershed management projects in and around our breweries, we recycle treated wastewater within the breweries. These efforts are not limited to our breweries alone. We make extensive efforts in generating public awareness on the adaption of rainwater harvesting practices and incorporation of the necessary infrastructure"
For the state of Karnataka, we have entered into a PPA for supply of renewable energy equivalent to 75% of the total power consumption in the three breweries. The wind energy comes at a discounted price of 15% lower than the grid power cost. For the rest of the country, we are planning to introduce rooftop / ground-mounted solar installations which will be to the tune of around 10 to 12% of the total power consumption. This also comes at a discounted price of approx. 15% lower than the grid power cost. The above initiatives by UBL partially replace the conventional modes of power supply with renewable energy source, thereby making a remarkable contribution to the environment.
The CSR projects are led by the CSR Head who works with a CSR Executive and in close coordination with the HR personnel at the breweries. Reputed local NGOs are entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the projects. The projects are regularly reviewed by the Managing Director. Furthermore, the implementation by NGO partners is closely monitored through regular visits by the UBL team and the monthly reports received from the NGOs. The NGO partners are responsible for the implementation of the projects on ground while the UBL teamsupports the implementation through regular dialogue with the community as well as the NGOs.
Our CSR initiatives are spread across varied geographies, each having its own unique challenges in terms of availability of resources and expectations of the local communities. Our broad CSR themes allow flexibility in choosing the areas we want to work in and the initiatives we want to undertake. For instance, under the water themes, we implement safe drinking water initiatives, using the RO technology in regions that have sufficient water. However, in the case of drought-prone areas such as Aurangabad, we first initiated water conservation projects followed by initiatives to reduce water wastage to the minimum. A customised approach is followed for every region where we implement our projects. During any project initiation, local communities tend to be cautious and skeptical of the company’s interest and it is for this reason that we lay great emphasis on comprehensive needs assessment as well as community mobilisation efforts. Community buy-in into the social development projects is a must for any project we implement.
Education: For enhancing education experience for children from the underprivileged sections, UBL’s education initiatives are designed for communities across locations around the breweries. Across India, UBL adopts neighbouring government schools and supports them in meeting their requirements. They have focused education projects in Rajasthan and Karnataka. Our efforts in certain backward regions of Alwar, Rajasthan works to facelift 10 government schools, in terms of infrastructure as well as teaching and learning experiences. In Mysore district of Karnataka, UBL attempts to promote science education among the children. We have established seven, first-of-its kind, mini science centres in government schools. The education initiatives have benefitted over 11,000 schoolchildren.
Health: Accessing primary healthcare forms a substantial portion of a rural household’s monthly expenditure and our healthcare initiative is directed towards reducing this economic burden. A majority of our breweries provide primary healthcare to the neighbouring communities in the form of consultations and medicines, which are free of cost-through health centres or mobile units. We have been able to provide medical care to over 60,000 people this year.
UBL will continue to be committed to the CSR and sustainability agenda that we have set for ourselves. Over the next three years we would like to reach one million people with our safe drinking water initiatives. Our ‘water neutral’ programme will see us identifying and implementing several large-scale projects in water replenishment and recharge. We have identified the theme of alcohol prevention and abuse as an important aspect of our CSR programme. We will commence working on this in the next few months and our aim is to make a difference, especially amongst economically and socially disadvantaged groups.
By Sangeeta Ghosh Dastidar
