Green initiatives make Sri City carbon neutral zone

Tirupati: Sri City has set up a sustainable eco-system and a new urbanism stringently enforcing the environmental standards. Green cover abounds in the business city, where only non-pollutant industries are permitted to operate. In line with its goal of being India's first carbon-neutral manufacturing zone, Sri City has adopted innovative green initiatives.

Measures like state of the art managed sewage treatment plants and a solar plant generating clean green energy powering all common facilities, including streetlights and traffic control systems, extensive use of electric vehicles, ensure that the city progresses towards carbon neutrality. For the first time in India, Sri City has proved with solid data that even after 12 years of industrialisation, there has been negligible deterioration in environmental norms.

Sri City has now grown to become a thriving sustainable industrial ecosystem, where over 200 companies from 28 different countries, with over 50,000 employees 'make for the world'. It has created its own rain water harvesting system, which collects all the storm run-off from the City and this caters to the water requirement for at least six months. As a result, the water table is maintained at two metres level. A wastewater treatment plant (WTP) works round the clock ensuring water recycling.

"We have not touched the groundwater yet. We are fortunate that we get rainfall to the level of 120 cm, almost equal to Chennai. We have installed rainwater harvesting systems in many places inside the zone. All the ponds and lakes have been retained and kept in good condition to conserve water. We have also been allocated water from the Kandaleru reservoir," says RavindraSannareddy, Founder Managing Director of Sri City.

As regards to the non-conventional energy source, Sri City has an installed 8 MW solar power. Rooftop installed Solar power generation by some of the industries is 4 MW. A dedicated nursery and landscaping division ensures that Sri City remains green. So far almost 10 lakh saplings have been planted in the premises. Green cover has been developed and well maintained along the internal roads and industrial area. For increased green cover, the Japanese 'Miyawaki' method of afforestation was adopted in ten acres.

Sri City's Environmental Cell is engaged in regular monitoring, framing of conditions and policies for sustainability of the City, development of green surroundings of the land area and access to clean, safe and hygienic air and water in the City. RavindraSannareddy said that they have plans to identify certain areas of land for developing green space that includes parks and community gardens. All these initiatives have fetched the business city several reputed awards also.