IT for Environment: Good enough, but not enough

BANGALORE, INDIA: Good Morning today seems to be replaced with Go Green. IT companies are going out of the bush and exhorting their employees to wear the green colour, on shirts, in spirit and in action.

There's a 'Gift a plant' day at one company, while at another you could see a 'Come on Bike' day. At some other glass facade with a swanky multi-storey building you might catch a 'CFL sale' instead of a regular SCRUM meet.

Call it CSR or scrambling to-be-seen-there, or real sincere awareness towards environmental duties, June 5, 2009 throws up many images of how IT corporates are going green.

There is a lot of talk and walk happening on green pastures.

Philips employees would be wearing green clothes. They will also “gift a plant” and a plant sale has been organized to facilitate employees to take home a little sapling besides a CFL sale to commemorate June 5 today, shares a company spokesperson.

Earlier on the 14 May Philips organized 'Bike To Work Day', she adds.

Meanwhile, Infosys Technologies organized an awareness drive by the Infosys Voice of Youth team and the Infy eco-club as part of the World Environment Day. It also kicked off a ‘Polythene bag-Free Commitment’ across all Infosys campuses globally. This initiative seeks to ban the use of polythene bags by Infosys employees in an effort to reduce the consumption of non-biodegradable plastics, said a company statement.

Wipro is rolling out activities across all Wipro development centres that cover creative competitions, nature programmes on rain water harvesting, how to reduce individual carbon footprint, how to make recycled paper and paper bags, case study and discussion on cleaning up of lakes, plastic collective drive, spreading awareness about seed ball technology, planting saplings, case study on green initiatives adopted by one of the offshore development centres at Wipro and ecological awareness programme by WWF students.

Today eight of ten people could be found planting saplings, but what about the rest of 364 days? Environmental activists and enthusiasts are asking this as they appreciate the newly-born awareness on green responsibilities. “The focus should be on maintaining this drive throughout the year,” stresses Brikesh Singh, climate campaigner, Greenpeace Bangalore.

Among all these, Singh picks up green buildings and energy efficiency moves as impressive ones. “These ultimately would go a long way because both the sides of energy, be it consumption or creation, play their critical parts in mitigating environmental damage.”

Numbers talk

Companies like Cisco offer some beans to count too. Cisco’s environment sustainability targets show reducing its absolute greenhouse gas emissions 25 per cent by 2012 based on its 2007 baseline emissions. It also talks about a Cisco’s 2006 Clinton Global Initiative Carbon-to-Collaboration commitment for reducing emissions from business air travel by 10 percent, using financial year 2006 as a baseline. It is using its own network-based collaboration products to cut down on business travel.

Even though Cisco’s headcount and revenue have increased at least 40 per cent since FY06, year-to-year GHG emissions from air travel have decreased from four percent in FY07 to less than one per cent in FY08, claims the company.

Cisco has 480 TelePresence rooms across the world. So far there have been 3,04,037 meetings, of which 56,896 meetings avoided travel, saving Cisco $224 million. It also claims that its Global Supply Chain Management realized over $3 million in annual cost savings through manufacturing efficiency.

Among other stuff, Cisco shares, “By regrinding the excess plastic produced during the manufacturing process, we recycle approximately 13 per cent of the plastic used in our IP phones, conserving materials and saving $880,000 a year. Converting product documentation from paper manuals to CDs saves 2.7 million sheets of paper a year and at least $1.2 million. By changing the format and reducing the font size in the printed material that accompanies our products, we saved approximately $1 million in printing costs and 22 million sheets of paper annually.” a company statement cites.

Sincere or packaged for June 5, many of the 'Go Green' chants are a welcome music.

As Singh reckons it, there is no lack of awareness, be it corporate or individual level; all that remains is that, we are inactive to a large extent, as long as we are not affected by it. “Companies, are coming up with smart policies, but the good corporate citizens should be given incentive. At the same time, companies that are harming the environment with irresponsible consumption should be penalized.”

Carrot or stick, as long as the colour is green, it would help. So keep going green!