How many times have you visited an automotive plant and felt like you have visited a green sanctuary? As we all know, automobiles have a big footprint, from tailpipe emissions to road infrastructure. They even consume a lot of energy before they ever make it to the open road—mainly because materials like steel, rubber, glass, plastics, paints and many more must be created before a new ride is ready to roll. Similarly, the end of a car’s life doesn’t mark the end of its environmental impact. Plastics, toxic battery acids, and other products may stay in the environment.
This is reality.
But the steps taken by Toyota to lessen this impact make them stand apart from the rest. You learn this when you visit the Toyota Kirloskar Motors (TKM) plant in Bidadi, Karnataka. They are genuinely shifting the gear to a sustainable future!
In 2015, Toyota set itself the Global Environmental Challenge 2050, which comprised six environmental challenges. The first three include achieving carbon neutrality throughout the entire lifecycle of vehicles. The other three challenges cover promoting a recycling-based society, reducing water consumption and helping build a society that is in harmony with nature. TKM’s sustainable choices and actions have led them to realise zero CO2 emissions in vehicle manufacturing operations even earlier than their set global target of 2035. On their product portfolio, they have adopted a holistic approach, adapted multiple pathways, and introduced hybrid vehicles towards realising a carbon-neutral automotive line. The organisation aims to reduce 90% of new vehicle CO2 emissions by 2050 by investing in green mobility, promoting the development of next-generation vehicles with low or zero-carbon emissions, and making conventionally powered models more fuel-efficient.
Vikram Gulati, the Country Head and Senior Vice President, Toyota Kirloskar Motor spoke about how TKM concentrates on hybrid vehicles instead of only electrification. One has to look at customer convenience, price sensitivity and acceptability. He compared the scenario in European market to India, where the EV ecosystem is just emerging. He said, “Indian carmakers are still setting up an ecosystem since many components are still imported, and the electricity itself is majorly dependent on coal.”
TKM has established Environmental subcommittees to decentralise the responsibilities of environment management and promote cross-functional efforts to manage the key focus areas. In-line with the Toyota Environment Challenge 2050, under its Challenge 3 of Plant Zero C02 Emissions, TKM had started its journey towards greening its energy source and has made substantial step-up over the years. In FY 2014, TKM gradually increased Green Energy procurement to meet the energy requirements. The solar projects & other schemes of the Government of Karnataka helped to achieve sustainable growth of TKM’s energy usage. To further enhance renewable energy supply, TKM installed roof-top solar power plants and ground mount facilities at its Bidadi premises and a dedicated solar park outside the company. TKM says it has made significant achievements on the path of carbon neutrality and net positivity with the help of strategic five-year action plans. TKM uses 100% renewable energy for its grid electricity needs. On water conservation initiatives, it has seen outstanding results with reduced freshwater usage by 90% in manufacturing.
In its journey of developing a strong sustainable culture in the company, TKM created one-of-a-kind experiential green campus through afforestation drive—called Ecozone, which doubles up as holistic learning centre for students to engage in the exploration of sustainability in various fields through place-based experiential education. The afforestation drive done via Miyawaki Method of afforestation, aims to conserve biodiversity, create awareness, and promote environmental education through collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. Thus, in its journey of building environment-friendly premises, TKM, to date has planted more than 323,000 saplings with 650 native species. To add to this, there has been an increase in the number of birds and butterflies and periodic halt of some of the migratory birds indicating that TKM has indeed created a healthy environment through continuous efforts towards establishing a cleaner and greener campus.