New Delhi, June 5 (IANS): ITC Limited is rapidly scaling up its integrated watershed development and environmental resources replenishment initiatives through partnerships with various state governments. These partnerships will be largely focussed on water stewardship and biodiversity conservation.

Over the past decades, ITC has demonstrated environmental stewardship by not only ensuring efficient use of resources but also by augmenting precious natural capital.

ITC has the distinction of being the only company in the world to be carbon positive for over 14 years, water positive for over 17 years and solid waste recycling positive for over 12 years. Over 41 per cent of the energy consumed by ITC is met through renewable sources.

ITC's afforestation programme has greened over 7,76,000 acres. Its watershed development initiatives have covered over 1 million acres, whilst its solid waste management programme Well Being out of Waste (WoW) covers over 1 crore citizens across the country.

Commenting on the company's resolve to reinforce its environment sustainability initiatives, Chitranjan Dar, corporate management committee member of ITC, said, "Going forward, our focus on sustainability and environment stewardship would gain larger significance in the post-Covid-19 period. The lockdown period has witnessed nature healing herself and going forward, and citizens will expect corporates to demonstrate larger steps to replenish and preserve the environment."

"At ITC, we believe that expanding interventions in environment replenishment and addressing climate change will be critical for a sustainable future," he added.

ITC's extensive watershed programme covers more than 1,000,000 acres across India. Under this programme, the company has adopted a comprehensive approach focussed on supply augmentation and demand side management. Supply augmentation covers area treatment, water harvesting, groundwater recharge and biodiversity conservation and demand side management aims at improving water use efficiency in principal crops of area.