On Global Recycling Day, Vedanta Limited (NSE: VEDL), India’s leading metals, oil & gas, critical minerals, power, and technology conglomerate, announced that it has recycled or reused nearly 15 million tonnes of waste. Additionally, it has maintained 100% utilisation of fly ash—a high-volume industrial by-product—since FY21, reflecting sustained progress across its operations. This milestone reaffirms the company’s commitment to sustainable development and responsible waste management, underscoring its focus on building a robust circular economy. Vedanta continues to embed innovative practices that transform waste streams into valuable resources, aligning business growth with environmental stewardship and a clear target to achieve zero legacy waste by 2035.
This year’s Global Recycling Day theme, “Don’t Think Waste. Think Opportunity”, highlights the importance of reimagining waste as a resource. Vedanta embraces this philosophy by reinforcing its “Waste to Wealth” programme, an innovation-driven effort to recover value from industrial by-products across its operations. Through these initiatives and innovation, the company is actively reducing its environmental footprint while creating shared value across the ecosystem.
Commenting on the significance of the announcement, a Vedanta spokesperson said, “At Vedanta Limited, sustainability and ESG are at the core of our operations, and we are committed to building a sustainable ecosystem by reinforcing waste as a resource. Through our various initiatives, we are focused on minimizing waste and maximizing reuse, and driving resource efficiency across our business units, while contributing meaningfully to our broader environmental goals.”
The company is advancing a strong circular economy approach by converting waste streams such as ash, slag, and refinery residues into gainful resources such as in cement, bricks, and road construction, and other by-products supplied to downstream industries through strategic partnerships. It is also enhancing resource efficiency through initiatives like tailings recovery and dry tailings management —tailings being the residual materials left after extracting valuable minerals from ore—which improve material recovery while reducing water use, with processed tailings increasingly repurposed for industrial applications. At the same time, the company is accelerating circular product innovation, including low-carbon ‘green’ zinc and aluminium offerings, branded under ‘EcoZen’ and ‘Restora Ultra’ respectively, further reinforcing its commitment to waste-to-wealth and low-carbon manufacturing. The company has also produced low carbon copper, made using recycled copper scrap for the 1st time in India.
Furthermore, Vedanta has undertaken significant steps and partnered with key industrial bodies to integrate circularity:
- Partnered with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) to supply fly ash for construction of green highways in and around Odisha
- Collaborated with premier research institutions such as CSIR and IIT Kharagpur to explore the use of high-volume, low-toxicity (HVLT) waste as a sustainable alternative to sand and as a base material for road construction
- Signed an MoU with Vedanta-supported Subhalaxmi Cooperative, one of Asia’s largest women-led cooperatives, to establish a women-led fly ash brick manufacturing facility, expected to produce one crore bricks annually
- Signed an MoU with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research – Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (ICAR-CTCRI) to drive sustainable agriculture and afforestation through the innovative utilization of red mud, a major industrial by-product derived in the process of refining bauxite for aluminium production
- Circularity through Runaya Partnership to enable recovery of zinc, lead, copper, and minor metals from residues, creating secondary raw material streams
- Zinc Fumer Plant – Recovering value from waste, resulting in a reduction of ~40,000 MT of jarosite (a zinc processing residue generated during hydrometallurgical refining, typically containing iron compounds along with residual zinc, lead, and silver), with recovery of ~3,000 MT zinc, ~4,700 MT lead, and ~33 MT silver annually, along with landfill savings of ~4 hectares per year.
- R&D-driven waste-to-wealth innovations, including iron recovery from jarosite as hematite (an iron-rich oxide and a primary form of iron ore); utilisation of slag and jarofix (a stabilised, cement-like material produced by treating jarosite residue) in cement and roads; metal recovery from tailings; and achieving 100% fly ash utilisation.
Through these initiatives and strategic industrial partnerships, Vedanta continues to advance towards its goal of zero waste and a more resource-efficient and sustainable future.
