*Know more about our CSR policy

 

 

As part of our Good & Green vision, we have established five environmental sustainability goals to be achieved by fiscal year 2020-21. We obtained the standards, methodologies, and assumptions used for the purpose of our calculations from the ‘IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, 2006’ and the ‘IPCC AR5 Assessment Report’.

Our emissions and data calculations are performed for all locations where we have 100 per cent operational control. All our manufacturing plants strive to achieve these goals by fiscal year 2020-21. Our performance is guided by the sustainability team at the corporate level and driven by manufacturing cluster heads and team members at each of our manufacturing locations.

* Performance as on March 2019 against fiscal year 2010-11

 

 

Specific water withdrawal per metric tonne of production (litre/MT) - India

Specific water withdrawal per tonne of product (litre/MT) - Global

 

 

 

4. Emission

All our manufacturing units monitor their GHG emissions, and we have set short-term targets to reduce our emissions and achieve carbon neutrality. Our energy efficiency initiatives contribute to GHG emission reductions. Some include switching to renewable biomass for boilers, procurement of renewable energy, flue gas heat recovery from boilers and utilisation in the process, and installation of energy-efficient equipment.

GHG emission intensity per metric tonne production (kg CO2e/MT) - India*

Specific GHG Emissions per tonne production (kg CO2e/MT) - Global

As an FMCG business, packaging plays a very important role in maintaining product integrity. We use delightful design and packaging as a way to differentiate our products, and we aim to do this in an eco-friendly manner. A number of our products are known for their unique packaging, which balances utility and recyclability.

 

 

 

 

 

Our CSR initiatives are guided by Good & Green and reported under Schedule VII, Section 135 of the Companies Act, 2013 in the Board’s Report.

Our CSR policy outlines our focus areas, defines the scope of activities, and guides execution and monitoring. Furthermore, it focuses on addressing critical social, environmental, and economic needs of marginalised and underprivileged sections of society by adopting a shared value approach to help solve problems while strengthening our competitive advantage.

Drawing from the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, we have developed programmes to address the issues of livelihood, public health, waste management, water, rural electrification and education, among others.

1. Salon-i and Beautypreneur

Programmes

Our flagship social initiative, Salon-i, is a vocational training programme for women. It is designed entirely in-house to train young women in basic skills of beauty, skin, hair care, and mehendi application. In addition, life skills and entrepreneurship development modules enable women to take up jobs or pursue self-employment depending on their unique skill sets and circumstances. Although Salon- i’s employability goal is small, compared to the country’s overall need, the programme is unique as it specifically aims at employability, entrepreneurship development, and empowerment of women.

We also reached out to women micro-entrepreneurs in the beauty and wellness sector in various parts of the country and set up the ‘Beautypreneur’ platform. Beautypreneur aims at developing beauty and wellness enterprises led by women, thereby enabling them to start training other girls. This is in addition to their regular salon business and thus helps them expand their enterprise.

 

Our Godrej Salon-i journey

 

Need

Women, although a significant proportion of the workforce in India, are largely concentrated in the informal sector and engaged in vocations characterised by low earning, low productivity, poor working conditions, and lack of social protection. Despite a rise in India’s GDP, India’s female labour force participation rate has declined. Women aged between 21 and 50 years have a high dropout rate from the workforce.

Given these trends, women are financially dependent on others. Addressing gender inequality is therefore not only the right thing to do but also important for our future growth as an FMCG business. By promoting the formal and active participation of women in the economy, we aim to help build their lives, families, communities, and the economy.

Our Beautypreneur programme works with micro entrepreneurs in the beauty and wellness sector

Our skill training programme works with the women and community to enhance their domain skills, while creating social and political awareness that helps them voice their opinions, negotiate their rights, and make their own decisions.

Trainees

We primarily work in peri-urban locations with:

• Low-income women who have dropped out of formal education
• Women from migrant families
• Women who have restricted mobility
• Women who are unclear about career paths and their options to become financially independent
• Women who face social obstacles to work
• Women who want to set up their own business but have no direction and access to funds
• Women who have set up a micro-enterprise and now want to scale up and increase their profits

Approach and market systems

We partner with non-profits and community-based organisations that work closely with communities and help in mobilising underprivileged women. The partner organisations implement the programme on ground, train them, and handhold them throughout the process.

The training curriculum (trainer manual, audiovisual content, assessment app, and other learning tools) has been developed entirely in-house. The entrepreneurship and life skills modules are at the core. We have also developed integrated activities and games to help trainees imbibe these concepts. We have a Learning Management System that enables blended learning through multimedia formats such as audio, video, PDFs and presentations.

An SROI impact study for the Beatypreneur programme showed that every ₹1 invested in the programme generated over ₹6.4 in social impact value

Impact

Our third-party impact assessment of Salon-i showed that over 50 per cent of our trainees take up employment and over 25 per cent of them work from home in beauty-related trades. Those who work from home earn between ₹1,000 and ₹5,000 per month, whereas those with jobs earn upwards of ₹5,000 per month, depending on the number of hours, location, skill level, etc. For most of our alumni, this is their first skill-based income source, and many women are the first women in their families and/or communities to step out of the home for paid employment.

We recently completed a third party/independent SROI study of the Beautypreneur programme that showed an overall social return of ₹6.46 on the programme for every rupee invested. The study details performance on technical knowledge and personality development of trainees, financial and non- financial empowerment, entrepreneurial spirit, income change, shared value of being associated with Godrej, and outcomes of our NGO project implementation partners.

An SROI impact study for the Beatypreneur programme showed that every ₹1 invested in the programme generated over ₹6.4 in social impact value

 

2. Darling hair and beauty skills training in Kenya

Programme

We conduct hairdressing training for young women from underprivileged backgrounds at 11 hairdressing skills academies in Kenya (Nairobi, Machakos, Yatta, Athi River, Keumbu, Nyaore, Ngirisu, Awendo Marindi, Kitui, Rongo, and Kitale). This 14-week programme includes both theory and practical sessions. The focus is primarily on hair care and braiding.

Need and trainees

Unemployment is a major problem in Kenya today, especially for the youth. Data is inconsistent, with government figures reporting 7 per cent, Internal Labour Organisation stating 11 per cent, and a United Nations Development Programme report citing a whopping 39 per cent. In this scenario, women are worse off. According to the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, only a third of Kenyans in formal employment are women.

Impact

We have trained over 4,500 women in five years. We are motivated by success so far reported by our alumni, several of whom have gone on to set up their own businesses (salons), and this is something we would like to facilitate for many more.

Our Darling hair and beauty skills training programme helps women gain employment

 

Project EMBED aims to eliminate malaria by creating awareness and driving behaviour change

As a corollary to the employability and livelihood programme, we set up a project to identify and train unemployed women and youth in entrepreneurship skills to ensure stable livelihoods.

The programme aims to provide an additional source of income to the youth, especially women. Rural households typically earn an average of ₹6,500 per month, and many live below the poverty line. It involves intensive mobilisation and a year-long handholding period to ensure that they succeed at their entrepreneurial ventures.

Youth are primarily provided training in different aspects of rural retail business and entrepreneurship. This is to train them to be mobile retailers or door-to-door salespeople. Eventually, some of them can set up a permanent store or even become local area stockists. In two years, over 1,270 youth have been trained as part of this project in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.

 

Elimination of Mosquito-Borne Endemic Diseases (EMBED)

Programme and need

EMBED is a great example of how we are using shared value principles to further both business and social needs. Introduced in Madhya Pradesh in 2015, EMBED followed a feasibility study on Indian states that had a high incidence of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria and dengue.

On analysing the problem, we realised that specifically, households and people at the bottom of the pyramid suffer from vector-borne and other diseases. To address this, we collaborated with non-profit organisations and the state government to run intensive behaviour change programmes in nine districts of Madhya Pradesh. We are also working with vulnerable and marginalised groups in tribal, hilly, and hard-to-reach areas to spread awareness about diseases.

Impact

• The programme currently addresses 45 per cent of the malaria burden in Madhya Pradesh across nine districts, 3,000 villages, 700,000 households, and 3,500,000 people
• In Phase I, 209 ASHA workers, 77 rural healthcare providers, 655 traditional healthcare providers, and 156 community volunteers have been trained on correct diagnosis treatment and/or referral of malaria cases
• On the basis of government data from 2015 to 2017, at the end of the third year (intervention in nine districts), 81% of the targeted intervention villages had no malaria cases.

 

Programme

Our efforts towards solid waste management extend beyond our manufacturing plants and immediate areas of operations. As part of our CSR efforts, we have commissioned and introduced community waste management projects by using circular economy principles. For example, we have collaborated with Hyderabad and Kalyan-Dombivali Municipal Corporations to implement community waste management projects.

Need

Waste disposal has hazardous impacts on the environment and society, particularly in developing countries, such as India, where over 150,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste is generated per day. Solid waste accumulation is an increasing problem due to unsustainable waste management practices and lack of proper waste treatment.

Approach

We have adopted a multi-stakeholder approach, designed to be economically viable, environmentally oriented, and socially inclusive.

• Stakeholder engagement: Work with municipal corporations and municipalities to institute sustainable solutions and civil society organisations as well as social enterprises to identify and establish long-term projects.
• Citizen's ownership: Citizens need to take ownership of municipal solid waste management, and adoption of sustainable practices is crucial to success.
• Tripartite partnership: Local municipality commits to providing land for segregation activities and recycling. Godrej invests in technology, whereas social entrepreneurs invest in other capital expenditure. This tripartite partnership ensures that the entrepreneur has a higher chance of success.
• Financial sustainability: It is essential that the project has built-in revenue streams to ensure long-term financial sustainability. Revenue can come from composting wet waste, selling recycled products, converting plastic to pellets for recycling, etc.
• Social inclusion: Segregation and recycling relies heavily on informal workers who collect, sort, and recycle the waste. Social inclusion projects cater to waste pickers by integrating them into the formal system, as well as providing safe working conditions, social safety nets, child labour restrictions, etc.

Impact

The projects helped divert over 25 MT of waste per day from landfill at each location. They are tackling different waste streams and demonstrating effective waste management solutions. However, the approach remains the same across locations, partners, and projects. Each type of waste is further segregated and made into final products that are fed as inputs to other industries, in line with the principles of circular economy.

 

Programme

We provide decentralised, off-grid renewable energy systems through community-level installations in rural India.

Need

Electricity is central to development in any modern economy. While access to electricity has improved over the years, in several of India’s remote locations, severe shortage of electricity continues to hinder daily life and full-fledged development.

Approach

The installation and commissioning of micro-grids generate employment both for unskilled and skilled labour. We employ unskilled people for mechanical and civil works, such as erecting module mounting structures, solar modules, and the civil foundation.

We have also trained selected people on the installation and commissioning of micro-grids. These trained professionals will be responsible for maintaining the micro-grids and imparting the training to other youth in their communities.

Impact

This programme is one of the few that has the power to transform lives from the day the systems come into place. The domestic micro-grids bring light to homes, which ensures that children can study in evenings, women can cook in safety, and community members have longer productive hours to engage in other income-generation activities.

Although the initiative is primarily aimed at domestic electrification, a few micro-grids also provide energy for water pumps, which enables marginal farmers to grow more than one crop and almost double their income within 1-2 years. Hundred energy-dark villages in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand are now powered by mini and micro grids sponsored by us.

Through our rural electrification initiative, we provide decentralised, off-grid renewable energy systems

 

Our integrated watershed development project will help restore the ecological balance in the drought-prone district of Siddipet in Telangana. Currently, groundwater levels are lower than 400 ft in many areas; as a result, farmers are under acute pressure.

Our efforts are designed to recharge groundwater and make more water available for irrigation over a total area of over 3,300 hectares and plantation of approximately 4,00,000 saplings. We have completed the capacity building phase and will begin full implementation in fiscal year 2019-20.

We are partnering with NABARD and PEACE, a local NGO, to work with local communities to ensure their buy-in, create civil structures to capture rainwater at appropriate places, build capacity of local communities in water management, and train on sustainable agricultural practices.

Dugouts built by the residents of Seddipet, Telangana, as part of our watershed programme

 

COMMUNITY INITIATIVES

After receiving valuable stakeholder input from third-party community needs assessments at our priority plant locations, we are now implementing a range of high-impact community development programmes on social and environmental aspects. These are focused on improving education, water, health, and sanitation and skill building initiatives in and around our manufacturing facilities.

 

DONATIONS

Every year, we make strategic donations to support skill development, employability, sports, arts and culture, and critical cancer ailment support.

 

Talking to children about their aspirations at schools in India on Godrej Global Volunteering Day 2018

 

MUMBAI MARATHON

In January 2019, 47 of our Godrej Group team members completed the Tata Mumbai Marathon in support of Teach for India and raised over ₹9,00,000 to bring quality education to children from low-income families across India.

 

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY

Every year, on World Environment Day, our team members host celebrations and spread awareness about the effects of our actions on the environment. We organise tree plantation drives around the communities of our manufacturing plants, cleanliness drives in collaboration with local panchayat and municipal corporations, and awareness sessions in local schools among other activities. In fiscal year 2018-19, over 830 of our team members participated in these activities.

 

PAYROLL GIVING

Our team members support our three non-profit partners directly through payroll giving. In fiscal year 2018-19, 48 Godrejites contributed approximately ₹3,00,000 in support of education, health, and safety of children and environment preservation and conservation.

As a part of our disaster relief efforts, we provide support to areas affected by natural disasters through contributions from Godrejites and matching grants from the Group. In 2018, our employees contributed ₹20,03,982 towards flood relief efforts in Kerala.