Choithram - balancing business and the environment (page 1 of 2)

T. Choithram & Sons is a Corporate Club member of WWF UAE - a demonstration of the company's support for conservation.

WWF chats with L.T. Pagarani, Chairman, T. Choithram & Sons LLC, on wide ranging issues impacting our lives and our planet 'Natural' foods and 'organic;' plastic carrier bags and recycling water; wasteful packaging and conserving energy....in a candid, one on one, he talks about how environmental concerns figure in their business operations.


WWF: Tell us about your company's environmental policy.
L.T. Pagarani: The majority shareholder of the Choithram Group is a Trust. A part of the Trust's objectives is to work with humanity which is, basically, to provide medical care, education and environmental solutions for the less privileged amongst us.

I am sure you hear of similar objectives from many organisations; but we work pretty hard to fulfil our obligation.

Most of our work is in Africa and India where we have a couple of hospitals and schools. In 2002, we set up a water recycling system in Indore (in central India), to recycle hospital waste. We did this so as not to impose on the domestic population's main water source - the river. There was some controversy about the purity of the recycled water, but we demonstrated through an independent audit that it was clean and the whole system worked. Presently we recycle about 80, 000 gallons a day, and are working to increase that.

In Dubai we are successfully recovering water through the A/C circuit; and are looking at taking this technology to the hospital in Indore. It is a large, 400-bed hospital, with its air circulation, cooling systems, laundry...all generating a lot of water as a by-product.

Are you into the business of organic foods?
Yes, we are trying to work with organic materials... but there is a bit of a commercial business motive to that. Our UK business supplies major retailers like Tesco, Sainsbury and Asda (Walmart) with natural and health foods - work which is very different from our Dubai operations. In fact, we have always been doing natural food products -- much before 'organic' started edging into the mainstream.

Now, we have begun growing things like soybeans, certain strains of wheat and chillies in India...without using pesticides. If we succeed in terms of yield, we can ship the produce, package it and then, sell it. We have faced a number of setbacks... but we're not giving up. Quite the contrary.

What about your UAE operations?
With respect to our business here, we reflect the customers we work with. There are tremendous challenges; and they are very difficult to prevail upon. One of them, of course, is the use of plastic carrier bags.

In this respect, we've improved our monitoring and control of how easily bags are given or taken or disappear. It's a difficult issue to tackle. People walk out with shopping held in several carrier bags, and some of these may have just one item! This is partly because you want to keep chilled products or meat products separately, as you don't have the protection of a temperate climate. We actually have access to data, store by store, and can study consumers' behavioural pattern. We've managed to be a bit more regulating in specific stores.

Also, in all supermarkets we have changed the pattern in which we allow access to other types of bags.