As champions of sustainable practices, Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) today announced the celebration of Environment Month through a series of environmental activities during June 2021, aimed at reviving and protecting the ecosystems, aligning with this year’s theme of ‘Ecosystem Restoration’ as announced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Further highlighting this year’s theme, special eco initiatives have been curated by TKM focusing on:
• Reduce Resource
• Reduce Pollution
• Reduce Waste
• Enhance Biodiversity
• Promotion of Environment-friendly Technologies
Environment Conservation is inherent to Toyota culture. With our vision, philosophy, and guiding principles, we at Toyota, are focused on achieving harmony between our manufacturing operations and nature. To bring about a real change, we strongly believe that community/stakeholder involvement plays a vital role.
As a part of Environment Month, TKM is rolling out a novel initiative called ‘Eco-lifestyle’ wherein the focus will be to bring about behavioural change by motivating various stakeholders including employees, suppliers, dealers and logistics partners to incorporate eco-friendly habits in their day-to-day lives. Such daily eco-practices will include simple solutions such as using reusable water bottles, grocery bags and coffee cups, avoiding single-use plastics and food packaging material and making use of green mobility solutions. The idea of this initiative is to help individuals understand how adopting a simple change in one’s life can make a huge positive impact on the environment.
Towards creating awareness about the critical environmental issues, TKM conducts Webinar, Eco-Lifestyle Campaign, Afforestation and Clean-up Drives, Virtual Tour of Ecozone, Sharing of TKM’s Eco Best Practices, engaging all its stakeholders. Through these initiatives, TKM intends to enhance environmental performances of our business associates/stakeholders and bring about behavioral change among the individuals.
Another special activity during this Environment Month is the promotion of eco-tips aimed at CO2 Emission Reduction and Zero Single-use Plastic, by utilizing our social media platforms (*social contest links provided below), inviting employees, dealers, and suppliers to share their individual eco-ideas. Through such series of informative tips and interactive exercises, we hope to inspire the community to join the fight to save our environment and participate actively and enthusiastically.
Guided by the Environmental Challenge 2050, the ‘Ecozone’ (set-up inside TKM’s plant premises) is an outdoor environment learning center, specially designed to provide experiential learning to stakeholders. Spread over 25 acres, Ecozone comprises of 17 theme parks (to name a few – value theme park covering 3Rs, medicinal garden, conservation of natural resources/energy, evolution timeline, climate change and so forth) representing the five modules of Water, Waste, Climate Change, Biodiversity, Energy together with a 500KW solar park and 51,000m3 rainwater harvesting pond. This is an eco-effort to introduce the crucial elements of nature connection by creating native ecosystems, working models, audio-visual and other sensory experiences including hands-on activities and experiments.
In addition to these above measures, a significant initiative is the newly developed Underground Ecology Theme Park at Toyota Ecozone within the TKM’s premises in Bidadi, Karnataka. This ecology theme park displays different types of homes of species that live below the ground and their architectural features enhancing the natural ecosystem, for e.g., soil fertility.” The theme park showcases different types of species living structure below the ground contributing to the soil nutrient cycle and further highlighting the abiotic and biotic elements in the whole scheme of our planet’s ecosystem.
Under this project, TKM aims to connect children with nature, promote environmental awareness beyond classroom learning and inculcate a behavior towards the conservation of the environment. Thus far, more than 9,517 students and 1,000 schoolteachers have been a part of this training at the Ecozone. With this, we intend to expand our reach by training 10,000 students per annum and utilize this learning center to connect with various stakeholders such as Supplier, Dealers, Employee and their families, Government Officials, NGOs and other corporates and work towards building a eco sustainable future.
Other special activities planned for Environment Month include QuizContents for TKM employees, their families, suppliers, and dealer partners to engage and build awareness on environment protection and conservation. Additionally, TKM is organizing a webinar for employees which focuses on exploring different ways of sustainable living by environmental expert, is on the anvil during June 2021. Through these initiatives, we are targeting to engage with our stakeholders and encourage “sustainable” lifestyles, raise environmental awareness, and motivate the TKM value chain to enable a society where people live in harmony with the natural world.
In response to the environmental threats posing the industry and mankind, the “Toyota Environmental Challenge 2050” was announced in 2015, forming the base of our commitment towards Environmental Protection. The six challenges widely cover every aspect of our business, our exploration of new products and technologies, and our role as an enabler for individuals and communities to learn about and improve the natural world around them.
One of the six challenges focus towards achieving “New Vehicle Zero CO2 Emission Challenge”. We at Toyota strongly believe that eco-friendly vehicles contribute to the environment only when they come into widespread use. Towards this challenge, we are accelerating advances in technology and wider adoption for the electrified vehicles that Toyota has been developing including hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs). We are committed to continuing working hand in hand with stakeholders to support the development of mass production infrastructure to achieve reduction of vehicle emissions and make the transition to electrified vehicles seamless.
As per study by iCAT, a Government testing agency, HEVs can run 40% of the distance and 60% of the time as an electric vehicle with petrol engine shut off. This gives HEVs tremendous fuel efficiency improvements (35-50%) and much lower carbon emissions. Further as per independent studies on a well to wheel basis, i.e. fully considering impact of energy generation and its end use, in case of India carbon emissions for HEVs are even lower than BEVs. Hence HEV will also play a critical role in reducing fossil fuel consumption, carbon emissions and pollution as well as in creating local EV parts manufacturing eco-system while simultaneously protecting the huge existing investments and jobs related to ICE parts manufacturing thus ensuring a faster and disruption free technology transition.
Explaining the rationale for the Environment Month activities, Mr. Raju B. Ketkale, Deputy Managing Director, TKM, said,
“Our eco initiatives have been strategically planned to exceed our management commitment, aimed towards achieving ZERO CO2, Water positive & Circular Economy Concepts with the final objective of eco sustainability. We have increased our green energy consumption to 94%, thus contributing towards a reduction of 2,41,000 tons CO2 emissions since 2014. We have been able to reduce 90% freshwater consumption at our manufacturing facility and have also achieved 96% recyclability of the waste generated.
We have planted more than 3,20,000 saplings with 650 native species which has helped in sequestering 4,700 tons of carbon di-oxide and enhanced biodiversity in our plant premises. Further, we are not only mitigating our impact on the environment, but also proactively contributing to the betterment of it by educating future generation on the topic of sustainable development in our one-of-a-kind experiential learning center – Ecozone.”
Needless to mention, we reaffirm our commitment to contribute to the society by ensuring conservation of our environmental ecosystem throughout the life cycle of our Products, Operations and Services, towards realizing our dream of “Living in Harmony with Nature”.
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