Green Initiatives

Indian Railways, the lifeline of the country, with carrying 23 million passengers every day is the largest passenger carrying system in the world.It is also the largest consumer of water as well as electricity and major contributor to green environment due to reduced GHG emissions. Indian Railways have been taking a number of steps towards Water Management, Energy Conservation, Solid Waste Management and Green buildings. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is the leading organization within the United Nations system in the field of environment and has as a major area of focus of its global mandate, the conservation, protection, enhancement and support of nature and natural resources worldwide.

Agreement with UNEP

In March 2017, Indian Railways signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to formalise the joint cooperation in the area of environmental conservation. The focussed areas identified for joint activities would be to;

• Collaborate in Formulating Specific Roadmap for achieving 20% reduction in Water consumption at Railway establishments.
• Collaborate in the development of a Draft action plan for establishing waste management centres at major stations on Indian Railways.
• Collaborate in the development of a Draft action plan for Indian Railways on sustainable public procurement for green technology.

Other Green Initiatives

• Commissioned 26 MW wind mill power plant at Jaisalmer.
• 10MW Solar Plants installed in two years. Massive solarisation (1000 MW Solar Power Plants) planned in next five years with an eye on making Railways, the largest solar power producer in the country
• Railways provided 27,000 bio-toilets in trains in the last two years.A target of 30000 bio-toilets set for the next financial year.
• First ‘Green’ DEMU train introduced on Northern Railway to run between Rewari-Rohtak section.
• A hybrid toilet system, combining best features of a vacuum toilet system and indigenous bio-toilet system has been installed for trial in a First-Class air conditioned coach of Dibrugarh Rajdhani which is running well since September 2015. The system does not require any waste handling facilities for evacuation and processing of waste. This system uses significantly less quantity of water for flushing.
• A new separate Environment Management Directorate formed to address all environment related issues in a focused and integrated manner.