Birla improves WASH rating

Mumbai, India – Birla Carbon, part of the Aditya Birla Group, raised its WASH safe drinking rating in early 2018 to 1.93 out of 2 compared to its 2015 score of 1.77.

Birla signed the WASH pledge in 2015, and has been growing its commitment year on year, according to a Birla release.

WASH, an acronym for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, is a pledge taken by organizations to provide access to safe drinking water to its employees and communities. The pledge is a World Business Council for Sustainable Development-designed scoring system based on self-assessment questionnaires with a maximum score of 2.0.

Birla said that under the WASH pledge all plants found creative ways of contributing to the initiative, whether inside the plant or community; held more than 140 awareness campaigns and training sessions; began actively measuring water use in plants; and established water recycling and reuse programs in all plants.

While the company is proud of its achievements to date, it will continue to look for new opportunities to improve access to water, said Joe Gaynor, chief legal, risk and sustainability officer at Birla.