Transforming the Planet

Building trust, ensuring transparency and no harm is significant to the relationship that Vedanta builds with its communities and enables us to do business. We are the drivers of economic growth and development in the areas we operate. This motivates us to ensure that we are and continue to be the developer of choice in our operation areas.

We strive for shared value creation and mutual trust with communities, and will adopt policies to ensure:

• We eliminate or minimize negative impact to communities
• Ensure open, trusting relationship
• Ensure timely redressal of grievances
• Bring economic development to communities

At Vedanta, we are committed to delivering meaningful and sustainable social impact. We recognize our responsibility to leverage our scale and expertise to deliver positive change. Under this aim, our community development programmes focus on upskilling youth, via vocational, agriculture, and sports skill-building training.

Women empowerment is a critical strategy for achieving development and alleviating poverty in our communities. Women who are empowered increase the health and productivity of their families and communities. We are also committed to ensuring that children get access to good education and healthcare right from their early childhood. Programmes such as Sakhi empower women and Nand Ghar plays the role of a model Aanganwadi in India’s villages.

Climate change is a major worldwide threat that is influenced directly by human activities and necessitates immediate response. We have a responsibility to address this global issue by reducing emissions at our operations and throughout our value chain, as well as producing metals, minerals and energy in a sustainable manner, which are critical for developing the technologies and infrastructure required to transition to a low-carbon economy.

Water is necessary for our survival. Human cultures have progressed over time and have been shaped by the basic need of water. Unfortunately, fresh water is not evenly distributed or accessible around the world, and it is found disproportionately in areas where people do not reside. Vedanta plans to ensure that we give back more than we take, thereby ensuring water security for all.

Vedanta is transforming portions of its business model and capturing economic benefit while lowering its ecological footprint over time through multiple innovative practices.

• Waste, Air Emissions & Tailings Management
• Biodiversity

Vedanta is dedicated to the health and safety of its employees and their families, as well as the communities in which they live. Our standards and crucial controls are designed to avoid deaths, injuries, and occupational mishaps, with the objective of achieving zero harm.

At Vedanta, diversity and inclusion encompasses more than policies, programs, and employee counts. Diversity and inclusion is a way of life at Vedanta. We value each team member's individual needs, opinions, and capabilities.

At Vedanta, we recognize that each employee is unique and that they contribute above and beyond their capabilities when provided with the right environment that nurtures, hones and grows their talent.

At Vedanta we know that strong corporate governance practices are at the center of strong ESG performance. Board committees, training of executives, ethical conduct, and long-term risk management are the key themes that we remain focused upon.

At the Lanjigarh refinery, the team has adopted a concept from the automotive industry.They now have a visual management system, with the idea of making key business processes visible. This approach helps management teams to identify any bottlenecks that need to be resolved and eliminated in order to run a successful and safe refinery. A key part of this approach is to resolve problems and barriers in a structured manner.

The boards also cover all the actions being undertaken during the day, with a specific focus of identifying any unplanned activities and/or risks in the operational area that may impact the refinery. They also flag any maintenance activities that may need to be performed over the next 24 hours. The final assessment involves identifying risks that the section may generate due to its activities at the 'one-week-out' stage, enabling advance planning to mitigate those risks. This approach has allowed the plant managers to systematically identify and address risks to the plant and eliminate safety hazards.

The approach underlines the overall philosophy of the Group when it comes to running safe operations. While our safety performance standards outline the expectations and help set out guidelines to prepare standard operating procedures, it is practices such as these that are helping businesses implement safe working conditions. Additional practices such as Visible Felt Leadership, improving the management of safety critical tasks, and increasing awareness, training, and accountability of our business partners will help the Group to deliver on its commitment of 'zero harm’.

Our ancillary product plant at the Dariba Smelting Complex is an important ‘waste to wealth’ initiative that generates value from certain recycling activities. The plant treats smelting residues to produce key consumables such as copper sulphate, zinc sulphate and potassium antimony tartarate, which will be recycled back into beneficiation and smelting processes.

Following its success, a new ancillary unit, expected in H1 FY2020, is under construction at the Chanderiya lead zinc smelter to treat all smelting process residue, including work-in-progress material such copper dross, purification cake, antimony dust and cadmium sponge.

At Vedanta Jharsuguda, we initiated a hazard identification and health risk assessment process. As part of the continual improvement of work areas, we completed our baseline exposure survey in 2017. The programme covered all occupational health hazards such as air borne contaminants, noise, vibration, heat stress and ergonomics. It made us aware of the degree of control we had over the hazards, and whether the maximum exposures were under the established Occupational Exposure Limits (OELs). After the baseline study, the entire site was divided into three zones. Red Zone - where exposure is above OEL, Yellow Zone - where exposure is more than 50% of OEL, and Green Zone - where exposure is below OEL. During FY 2019, we focussed on the Red Zone areas and targeted 10% reduction of exposure by implementing engineering control measures, process changes and automation. In addition to this, we also reduced the duration of exposure to decrease the level of impact