Corporate Houses Are Aware Of Their Accountability, Penalising Won’t Help: Parag Bengali, Director, Bisleri International Pvt. Ltd.

With almost 60% market share in India’s packaged drinking water sector, Bisleri is one of the oldest and popular brand in the country. In an interview with The CSR Journal, Parag Bengali, Director for Bisleri International Pvt. Ltd, talks about their CSR initiatives and philosophy behind the same undertaken by the organisation.

Please list the major CSR activities taken up by Bisleri.

In India, Bisleri has been the synonym for water since 50 years. We have taken this responsibility on ourselves to conserve the most important resource i.e. water. Apart from our mission to ensure access to pure safe drinking water, we also make a conscious effort to keep our environment safe and healthy. We are actively involved in various initiatives such as PET bottle recycling, rainwater Harvesting, building check dams and reconstruction of wells.

One of your projects of recycling plastic bottles has found place in the Guinness World Record. How do you go about recycling these bottles? What do you with the products made after recycling?

We collect PET bottles at all our plants and provide it to institutions that recycle plastic bottles. These PET bottles are recycled into only non-edible items like carpets, fabric to make t-shirts, bags, industrial straps, sheets and so on. We encourage and support collection of PET bottles at the point of consumption so that it does not end up as landfill.

 You are in a business which leaves high impact on environment. How do you try to curb your carbon footprint and ensure responsible and sustainable business?

The very purpose of all our CSR initiatives is to reduce our carbon footprints. We believe in giving back to the environment. Ground water is NOT an endless resource. Hence activities like Rainwater harvesting and building check dams are implemented to replenish ground water resource. Also recycling PET bottles helps reduce the waste, saves energy, and useful articles are made out of it.

What difference has the CSR mandate made in your CSR budget?

CSR has always existed in corporate houses, earlier it was known as philanthropy. After the CSR mandate it has become more formalised and structured. There is a defined budget which is allocated which makes the execution organised.

Do you think, we need to have stricter monitoring of the CSR mandate? Do you think penalising would help?

CSR is becoming more organised and corporate houses are aware of their accountability. Penalising won’t help in anyway.

 Tell us in brief, what is CSR to Bisleri.

At Bisleri, we understand our responsibility as a company, which is looked upon by the citizens of our nation. We consider CSR as one of the most important activity by the company. For us, it not just a ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’, we call it ‘Our Social responsibility’. We believe in taking up sustainable projects which will benefit our environment and society. CSR is close to each one of us associated with Bisleri. We ensure that all our water harvesting projects are beneficial to the people especially farmers in rural areas, thus improving their farming income.

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Regards,
The CSR Journal Team