BKT AND CESVI Promote Sustainability with Game at Bauma

Visitors to the BKT booth at the Bauma trade show received a subtle but powerful message about sustainability through football and a jigsaw puzzle. They had a chance to score a goal by putting the ball through the center of a BKT tire. They also had the chance to put together a jigsaw puzzle in two minutes. Called “Play and stay green!”, the simple game was meant to promote interest in sustaining the life of the Amazon rainforest. BKT teamed up with Cesvi to ensure that 350 trees would be planted and protected in the Amazon rainforest, one for each of the 350 participants who successfully tackled these challenges.

BKT is a major global manufacturer of off-highway tires and this is not the first time that the company ahs taken up the green cause. For a long time, the company has been participated in international exhibitions and used them as a platform to showcase its products, projects, values, ideas, and its core principles of quality, technology, innovation and service. BKT has also focused on promoting attention to the communities it is close to, the environment, and the future of the people it supports.

At Bauma, the spotlight was on the Department of Madre de Dios, a part of Amazonia in Peru. This focus was the outcome of the company’s collaboration with Cesvi, an Italian NPO that has been working at the global level for over 30 years. Cesvi specializes in providing aid during major humanitarian crises and in carrying out projects that alleviate poverty and support sustainable development.

The amazon rainforest, in view of the diverse wildlife it supports and the area that it covers  is considered as the Earth’s lung. It is one of the places on the globe that has the highest level of biodiversity, but is also known for the extraordinarily high levels of soil degradation and deforestation due to mainly illegal wood extraction activities. Cesvi works with native communities in Peru on projects that will help to safeguard the biodiversity and the environment of the region. The aim is to transform the natives into the real Guardians of Amazonia so that they can protect the rain forest and this will support both their economic and community development.

BKT is fully committed to continuous research into sustainable processes and materials in addition to its participation in international projects on environmental protection. The company has set up wind power plants at the Bhiwadi production site in 2004, and in 2017 set up an R&D Center in Bhuj, where intensive work is carried out with regard to sustainability.

The company has also engaged in a recent project that focuses on developing substitute materials to natural rubber, with the global demand for rubber projected to reach 17 million tons by 2025 leading to fears that there will soon be shortage of this raw material.

For the purpose of developing new compounding methods based on the use of TKS rubber deriving from Russian Dandelion as renewable and sustainable alternative to natural rubber, BKT has actually undersigned a joint research agreement with Kultevat Inc., an American company specialized in green technology headquartered in Saint Louis, Missouri.