Hindustan Zinc said on Thursday that it recycled nearly 23 billion litres of water in FY26, pushing its annual water recycling rate up to 49%. At the same time, overall water withdrawal came down. The company also held on to its 3.32x water-positive status, a sign that it's continuing to get more efficient with water use and relying less on freshwater across its mining and smelting operations.

That combination — more recycling, less withdrawal — is really the point Hindustan Zinc is making: that it can keep circular water management on track even as operations continue at scale.

This improvement has been driven by the company’s long-term strategy to embed water efficiency across its operations through advanced water recovery technologies, Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) systems comprising effluent treatment and water treatment plants, and increased utilisation of treated water. By maximising water recovery and reuse, the company continues to reduce freshwater dependency while improving resource efficiency across its integrated operations.

Arun Misra, CEO, Hindustan Zinc, said, “The future of mining will not be defined only by what we produce, but by how responsibly we utilise the resources entrusted to us. As India accelerates its industrial and infrastructure growth, the sector has an equally important responsibility to strengthen environmental resilience. At Hindustan Zinc, we are embedding circular water management into every stage of our operations and future expansion, ensuring that growth is decoupled from freshwater dependency. Our focus is to create long-term value by advancing operational excellence while safeguarding water resources for communities, ecosystems and generations to come."

Hindustan Zinc says water recycling is built into how it runs its operations. Across its sites, the company relies on a mix of advanced water treatment infrastructure — Zero Liquid Discharge systems, Effluent Treatment Plants, Reverse Osmosis units, Multi-Effect Evaporators, and Mechanical Vapour Recompression systems — all aimed at getting the most reuse out of every drop.
Filtered tailings technology has become a bigger part of that effort too. The company now recovers more than 80% of water from tailings, which cuts down how much fresh water it needs to draw in the first place. That push got a boost in FY26, when a second filtered tailings plant came online at Rajpura Dariba in Rajasthan, adding to the company's overall water circularity.
In Udaipur, a 60 MLD sewage treatment plant — built in partnership with the Government of Rajasthan — treats municipal wastewater, producing industrial-grade water. It's now a meaningful chunk of the company's water supply, and it's also helping the city manage its wastewater better.

The company's water work doesn't stop at its own gates. Over the last five years, Hindustan Zinc has carried out more than 280 water conservation projects in water-stressed communities nearby — building rainwater harvesting structures, reviving ponds, constructing check dams, and recharging groundwater. Together, these efforts have created a community water storage potential of 62.3 million cubic metres, which translates into real, longer-term water security for the people living around its operations.

All of this ties back to the company's ESG commitments, particularly UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 on clean water and sanitation. It's also part of Vedanta's broader push to make natural resource development benefit communities directly, not just shareholders. Hindustan Zinc's induction into the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) in 2025 adds further weight to that story — it's the first metals and mining company in India to be held to ICMM's benchmarks for responsible, sustainable mining.