Infy goes the green way

Greenbacks apart, Infosys holds the green track
Thursday July 1 2004 The New Indian Express

BANGALORE: There are many things about IT major Infosys Technologies that don’t need a second reference, but what we don’t know is the environmental management initiatives taken up by the company.

Though Infy has always been following eco-friendly practices like keeping 50 percent of its campuses green, and putting in place effluent treatment plants and water bodies for ground water recharging among others, it has only recently gone in for a framework in this respect.

The company has received the ISO 14001 certification from Det Norske Veritas (DNV) for all its development centres in Pune, Chennai, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Mohali and Mysore.

One might wonder how an environmental management certification helps business. Binod H R, vice president, Commercial & Facilities, Infosys Technologies, explains,

‘‘It will not affect business directly, but it will certainly help if our clients know that Infosys is ISO 14001 compliant, because most of them have this certification. Also this is not exactly a business initiative but a people’s one.’’

‘‘If 25,000 of our employees become environmental champions, just imagine the impact and influence they can have on society,’’ he quips.

The company’s initiative called ‘Ozone’ has been giving several tangible benefits, Binod says. ‘‘After the certification, we have a framework to work on. We started the initiative in November 2003 and set targets of about five percent reduction in power, water and paper consumption by March 31, 2004. With a lot of participation from the employees, we have not only achieved the targets, but overrun it. Now, our targets will be tightened and, by the end of this year, we plan to reduce consumption in these three areas by 10 percent,’’ he adds.

Asked if the practices had had an effect on the company’s bottomline, he said, ‘‘the financial impact has not been quantified yet. We will be in a better position to understand the impact next year, but the benefits are definitely there.’’

Charles Hawkes, associate vice-president - Facilities, adds: ‘‘For example, we have an agreement with Khadigram Udyog to take our used paper and recycle them into notepads for us. Hence all the outgoing paper comes back to us to be used again. We have technologically advanced effluent treatment plants to segregate dry and wet wastes which are then treated and used; water is recycled (in fact fresh water is never used for gardening in the company), so quantity of water is almost halved, resulting in savings.’’

Infosys is planning to take these practices to its units abroad also. First on the list is Australia. Binod says, ‘‘In 6-8 months time, we will start these in our Australian facility. We will not look at China and Mauritius right now as we don’t have too many people working there. Same in the US.’’

The company, as part of its Ozone initiative, is celebrating ‘Ozone week’ in the Bangalore campus from June 28. The likes of Romulus Whitaker, Belinda Wright, Ullas Karanth, Mitali Dutt Kakar, Bittu Sahgal - all well-known environmentalists - have been invited to give talks and show their movies to Infoscions.

‘‘We want to create awareness among our people so that they can take this knowledge home too, and not just in office. There are instances where employees have taken their own environmental steps, like car pooling (saves on fuel) and starting effluent plants in their apartment blocks. ‘‘Now, we are even keeping one session on this at the orientation sessions for fresh recruitments along with health and safety measures,’’ Hawkes adds.

Looks like Infosys is becoming a ‘green campus’ both internally and externally.