Both the safety and sustainability concepts at their core are geared towards preserving human resources. An organization cannot be called sustainable if it does not focus on protecting the health and safety of its employees.

Recently leading chemical industry experts discussed the link between safety and sustainability at the session, ‘Safety promotes sustainability’ on the sidelines of the 4th edition of Indian Chemicals Council (ICC) Sustainability Conclave held in New Delhi on November 17-18, 2022. 

“With increasing stakeholder expectations on sustainability, the thriving businesses need leaders who look at it positively. In a study, ERM interviewed 273 leaders and 24% of them spoke on expectations from ESG. 35% of leaders say the system is bureaucratic, and 24% complained about implementation. Since the risk appetite is decreasing within the industry, rather than investing in a new system, improvement would be better. Since existing Health and Safety (H&S) function is often unable to meet the expectations, the evolved approaches will help the organizations,” said Abhijit Rajput, Technical Director, ERM.

“Operational discipline is important to reduce risks in an organization. Ownership of the risk amounts to ranking of the risks depending on the level of risk ownership. We need to identify the top five or six risks in an organization as the safety incidents are mostly due to poor maintenance and when plants are operating less than the capacity. There is a large room for identifying the risks and addressing the safety challenges,” said Srinivasan Ramabhadran, Board Member & MD-Asia Pacific, DuPont Sustainable Solutions.

“Indian Chemical Council (ICC) has come up with a module on chemicals in collaboration with Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai to create awareness on the subject. Government too is committed to take care of the safety aspects at the organizational level as well as broader level. The Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals (DCPC) has issued safety advisory three times so far in the last one year. We have created a Facilitation Cell for implementation,” said Dr Vishal Choudhary, Deputy Industrial Advisor, DCPC, Government of India.

“The India Bromine Platform (IBP), a BSEF initiative in collaboration with the Indian Chemical Council aims to promote bromine based technologies. It holds bi-monthly meetings to discuss the initiatives. Bromine safety handbook is available on Indian Chemical Council (ICC) website and its initiative ‘Nicer Globe’ is dedicated to establish standards for transport safety & emergency response and improve transport safety capabilities enhance community’s admiration for the chemical industry. Mock drills by ICC help in preparing for the future. It is working with the government agencies and there are 13 members from the chemical industry,” said Mahendra Shelke, AGM-Head of Logistics & Warehousing, LANXESS India.

Themed as ‘Boardrooms to Community- ESG, Carbon Neutrality, Operational Safety, Greener Solutions’ the two-day conclave broadly focused on the topics such as ESG in Boardrooms: Vision and Strategies for value creation; Decarbonizing the Chemical Sector: Reflections to Actions Product; Stewardship: Going beyond Regulatory Landscape; Unlocking the potential of Digital Transformation for Sustainability; Exploring Green Growth Opportunities: Solutions & Technologies; Leveraging Cleaner Energy Transitions; Safety promotes Sustainability; Embracing Net-Zero Transition: Risks & Opportunities; and Session by UNEP -Plastic Pollution: Strengthening the Role of the Industry.

Various speakers expressed their views on climate, sustainable development and the steps that could be taken in this direction. CEOs and representatives of the Indian and global chemical companies, people working in EHS dept. in companies; Central and State Government officials, Pollution Control Boards, international multilateral organizations, Global chemical industry bodies and experts from Academia and civil society organizations are participating in the event.

The annual flagship event is a major initiative of ICC for promoting sustainability in the management of the entire life cycle of chemicals. 

Indian Chemical News was one of the leading official media partners of the event.