The Global Fight : Manufacturing - Our Industry

We face one of the biggest fights that any of us have seen in our lifetime.

With the recent series of extreme weather events - ranging from devastating floods in Germany and France, record-breaking storms in the UK and sweltering heat waves across the Northern Hemisphere -? science is shouting from the rooftops that it is time to step up our actions to the level of a magnitude sufficient enough for this challenge.

The United Nations' warning of ‘Climate catastrophe’ was alarming, an alarm that alerted us to the degree of danger that lies ahead. According to the report, the global average temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. Even with all the 200 countries that made voluntary pledges to reduce or slow down emissions under the Paris Agreement, there will still be a rise in temperature that is forecast to worsen the wildfires, droughts, floods and extreme weather events that we see today. Only this month, the IPCC report left the world with this harrowing message, "the scientific evidence is unequivocal… any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future."

Frightening don't you think? The world is running out of time to slow down climate change and the United Nations' intergovernmental panel has sounded the alarm. As the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, India will be a critically important part of this fight and the emerging trend in global emissions. We are already seeing some great steps taken by our government and industry leaders to help address these global issues and I have the greatest of confidence in India's ability to tackle climate change head-on.

Committing to change in order to reach our countries climate goals isn't just a good climate policy, it is a chance for each country globally to invest in its people, themselves and the future of humanity and all species that we share this planet with. Climate change is out of reach unless we work together, collectively. Business leaders, governments and manufacturers alike must put our focus behind India's climate goal. Whether we can help in the lowering of emissions, contribute to a clean energy mission or create an additional carbon sink, whatever it is we can do to play our part, we must do it.

Considerable changes need to be made across a large aspect of manufacturing policies if we are to fulfil climate goals and transform our operations so that they are future-proof, profitable and most importantly sustainable.?

So how can we do this? As a leading tyre manufacturer, in our commitment to innovating for the greater good, our mission is to continuously look for ways to reduce carbon emissions, from efficient water and waste treatment in our manufacturing plants to investing in R&D for developing sustainable ‘green' tyres. By improving our resource efficiency in our manufacturing processes and setting high emission reduction targets, we can take the necessary steps needed to achieve a net-zero greenhouse gas economy.

But what is net-zero? The term net-zero means reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible and balancing the gases that are released into the atmosphere by removing them from the atmosphere - for instance, by planting trees and focusing on forest regrowth which is a key initiative in the Apollo Tyres Afforestation project. Improving resource efficiency in manufacturing processes is as important as reducing the transport industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. Apollo Tyres and friends of the manufacturing industry must reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and adopt better environmental and sustainable design practices. We must develop, demonstrate and make use of the emerging technologies that we see today so that we can drive towards a net-zero transition.

The world is changing and the potential is there for all manufacturers to use this digital transformation to do things better.

In an era where digitalisation is making significant advancements, we are seeing new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) that allow manufacturing companies to improve their quality of products, efficiency and added safety of employees. Now, artificial intelligence can also help us to reduce the environmental impact of our manufacturing processes and take major strides in reversing the trend of overproduction by adopting a reuse, reduce and recycle approach to make manufacturing more sustainable.?

Emission responsibility and climate goals call for investment in our future from everyone along the supply, distribution and logistics chain. It also calls for employers and employees to act now and work together so that we can generate innovative solutions to avoid a climate disaster. Reaching climate goals will require new technologies and unprecedented levels of innovation, but in an era of climate champions, many are already showing us the way.