Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited

Under the TNPL Effluent Water Lift Irrigation Scheme, the farmers will be provided treated effluent water for irrigation purpose. TNPL uses a state-of-the-art sludge treatment system for treatment of Effluent water. The treated effluent water is used to irrigate about 1,250-acre (5.1 km²) of dry land with about 250 farmers who belong to the TNPL Effluent Water Lift Irrigation Society. TNPL's effluents have to comply with the norms set by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board.

As per the National Forest Policy, 1988, forest based Industries should raise the raw material needed for meeting their own requirements. In accordance with the law, TNPL has embarked upon development of a plantation in the year 2004–05 and launched two plantation schemes, namely Farm Forestry and Captive Plantation.[7]

Under the farm forestry scheme, the Company motivates and facilitates the marginal and small farmer to take up pulpwood plantation. The salient features of the Scheme are a supply of quality planting material at subsidized cost, arranging credit facilities for the needy people through banks, providing timely technical advice through a team of qualified professionals, and buy back arrangement with minimum support prices or prevailing market rate at the time of felling, whichever is higher, and harvesting and transport of pulpwood from the farmer's field to Factory at company's cost.

In the captive plantation scheme, Captive plantations are raised in the lands belonging to the Company, Government Departments, and Educational institutions and in the large land-holding individuals on a revenue sharing basis or on a lease rental basis. The minimum criteria for captive plantation is that the land should be a block of 25 acres (100,000 m²) & above in a single location whereas less than25 acres (100,000 m²) is also considered only in the case of adjoining lands of existing captive plantations, provided the adjoining areas should be contiguous to the existing plantation. TNPL enters into a MoU with the owners of such lands for raising a Captive Plantation and undertaking the responsibility of land development, establishment of plantations, maintenance of plantation and harvesting the pulpwood at TNPL's expense. The land would be taken either on long term lease spanning over a period of 6 to 30 years lease or on a gross revenue sharing basis. In the revenue sharing pattern, if the plantation is raised in a barren land, the produce is shared between TNPL and the landowner on a 70:30 basis and in case of wet lands, the revenue sharing pattern is 60:40. In the case of lease mode, the lease rent for a barren land is ₹1000 per acre, whereas for an irrigated land it is ₹3000 per acre every year paid to landowner and the entire product is taken by TNPL.

In the last five years of operation (2004–05 to 2008–09), TNPL has raised plantation in 37,556 acres (151.98 km²) involving 8235 farmers in twenty eight districts in Tamil Nadu under the Farm Forestry scheme and 2,735 acres (11.07 km²) under the Captive Plantation Scheme. In all, TNPL has established pulpwood plantations in about 40291 acres (as on 31 March 2009).[8]

To cater to the need for a huge amount of planting material to the tune of 15 million plants to cover 15,000 acres (61 km²) every year, TNPL established a state-of-the-art clonal propagation and research centre (CPRC) to achieve self-sufficiency in planting material and production of quality clonal/ seedling plants with a capacity of 15 million plants per annum.[9] The clonal production centre was started with a mini clonal hedge garden of 4000 sq.m, a mist chamber of 8000 sq.m, 5300 sq.m of hardening chamber and 20000 sq.m of open nursery with updated technological innovations as per international standards. The clonal production center was established at an outlay of about 50 million. This is considered to be a milestone in the plantation activities and assures quality planting material availability throughout the year The above plantation schemes are being implemented throughout Tamil Nadu through 10 regional offices in Karur, Manaparai, Tirunelveli, Karaikudi, Pudukottai, Namakkal, Trichy, Tanjore, Jayangondam and Panruti providing advice and technical assistance to tree growers.

• Fly ash generated at the power boilers is being sold to the cement plants
• Effluent sludge is being sold to the Board manufacturing units
• Lime sludge generated is being recycled in the Lime Kiln

TNPL has obtained the prestigious ISO 14001 Certification from RMTUV, Germany for "Successfully establishing and applying environmental management system for development, manufacture and supply of paper". This certification duly acknowledges TNPL's commitment for environment protection and sustained efforts to minimise the overall environmental impact.

• TNPL has commissioned the Bio-methanation plant, which generates around 23000 m³ of biogas (methane) per day, to be used as fuel in the lime-kiln in replacement of furnace oil. The biogas e replaces around 10–12 KL of furnace oil per day in the lime-kiln. During the year 2003–04, the bio- methanation plant generated 4145,000 m³ of methane gas and replaced the use of furnace oil worth ₹24.8 million
• TNPL obtained the 3 Leaves Award[11] under the Green Rating project of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi during October 2004, in recognition of the Environment Management System.

TNPL commissioned a special kind of reactor concept for the "high rate" anaerobic treatment of wastewater called the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket (UASB) reactor which uses anaerobic granular sludge bed technology. The most common Bagasse Wash Water (BWW) treatment system used in India consists of a pond or a lagoon treatment system, which undergoes anaerobic digestion that releases a significant amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) into the atmosphere. In addition, the project also involves a system for utilization of extracted biogas which gained CDM benefits for the project from the closed reactor as fuel in a lime kiln, which had been using furnace oil (fossil fuel).[12] Installation of a closed reactor by TNPL for anaerobic digestion of BWW will have many environmental and sustainable development benefits.[13]

1. Replacement of the current wastewater treatment system by a closed anaerobic digester will mitigate large quantities of CH₄, a potent GHG, from being emitted into the atmosphere.
2. Controlled environment in which the BWW is treated will reduce strong odours being emitted from the putrescent and degradable components of BWW.
3. By recovering the resulting biogas in the form of CH₄ and using it as a renewable in-house fuel for heating equipment, the project activity will contribute to the development of renewable sources as per India's Sustainable Development objectives.
4. The furnace oil which would be replaced by the biogas has a sulphur content of 3.49%. This would result in the emission of sulphur dioxide (SO₂) gas which is responsible for acid rain.
5. The use of domestically available biogas as an energy resource helps conserve foreign exchange, apart from creating local rural employment opportunities, by reducing the need to import fossil fuels to meet the country's growing energy requirements.
6. Furnace oil saving will reduce the associated CO₂ (GHG) emissions.
   By registering with UNFCCC for CDM benefit, TNPL became the first paper mill in the country that has registered a CDM project with the UNFCC in waste management.[14]

Wind generators of TNPL (Extreme Right) located at Devarkulam, Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu, India.

TNPL has gained CDM benefits by generating green energy through renewable wind energy.[15] The project activity involves the installation, operation and maintenance of seven grid connected wind electricity generators (WEG) owned by the project proponent, TNPL. The electricity generated from the seven WEGs will be exported to the Tamil Nadu state electricity board (TNEB) grid. The seven WEGs have been installed in two phases. The first phase involved installation of four NEG Micon 750 kW WEGs and the second phase involved the erection of three Suzlon Energy WEGs of 1.25 MW. All seven WEGs have been installed in the Thirunelveli district, in the state of Tamil Nadu, India.

On 30 March 2001, TNPL commenced operations for the first phase of the project with the installation of the four 750 kW WEGs. The second phase of the project has commenced operations in March 2004.[16] All 7 machines supply and sell power to the TNEB grid.

By displacing the electricity from fossil fuel based electricity generating systems, average estimated GHG reduction from the project activity is expected to be 14431 tons CO₂ per year.