As pressure on the environment is growing with the increasing energy consumption, carbon footprint, felling trees, global warming and emission, we see the effects reaching us in the form of climate change, erratic monsoon, higher temperatures, threats to food security, melting glaciers and an increase in the number of natural disasters. What then is the solution?
Many companies have adopted sustainability measures to reduce their carbon footprint and become more environment-friendly. Some of these corporates are Wipro, Infosys, Accenture, Symantec and GE.
Vice-president and head of sustainability of Wipro Ltd. Narayan P S said, “This year’s theme is centred around food.” Wipro has sustainability initiatives on their campuses in the form of recycled water, use of renewable energy, organic waste converter, recycling of e-waste and others.
Infosys has green initiatives of using renewable energy, recycling water, efficient use of water and power, reducing emissions, etc. Waste water generated on their campuses is treated at their sewage treatment plants and this recycled water is used for landscaping and flushing purposes. Their sustainability report stated that all their buildings are energy efficient and use renewable energy.
Accenture’s environmental footprint consists primarily of carbon emissions generated from business travel and office energy use. They promote eco-efficiency by having employees work one or more weeks per month from their local office or home-office locations and the remainder of the month at the client site.
The GE India Technology Centre in Bangalore has a zero waste water discharge facility which utilises an on-site waste water treatment plant for domestic and industrial effluents. An average of 250 KL of fresh water is saved on the site per day due to this treatment. “Our focus is employee involvement in all our sustainability activities. This ensures that our programmes are sustainable and successful in the long term,” said Paresh Thakkar, Environment, Health and Safety leader at GE India Technology Centre.
Symantec builds and operates facilities according to recognised environmental standards, finds ways to recycle more and selects vendors based on their efforts to conserve resources.