Chipping in for a cause

Chipping in for a cause
DHNS

Corporate companies in the City, particularly from the IT industry, have joined hands to form a forum called ‘World Environment’ (WE) to focus on ways to reduce carbon emissions in offices and help arrest global warming.
The forum was inaugurated last week at the office of LogicaCMG, a leading European IT and business services company. Logica initiated the idea of such a forum and organised a workshop, ‘Environment responsibility@work’ which had participation from over 30 companies in the City.
In his presentation, Rahul Patwardhan, CEO, LogicaCMG said, “Everything we do today has a cascading effect on world environment. Every particle of Co2 released stays in the air for over 100 years and planting trees is no longer enough to offset the damage.”
A dialogue on the subject is only the first step, said Rahul. “We have only facilitated the creation of a platform for dialogue and discussion. To make a difference we require a combined leadership, technical skills, commitment and effort.”
Cyriac Joseph who runs the website www.carbonneutralbangalore.org shared hard hitting facts about the changes in environment. Power consumption and traffic are the major culprits, he said. Every Mega Watt of Coal power used releases 650 kgs of Co2 are released in the air, he said. Every litre of petrol used releases 2.3 kgs of Co2 and a litre of diesel releases 2.71 kgs of C02.
Gopakumar, an alumnus of the Beahrs Environment Leadership Programme run by University of California , Berkeley and the co-founder of The Nityata Foundation (www.nityata.org), gave a Bangalore perspective to climate change. He said the large-leaved Mahogany tree trunk on St Mark’s Road releases oxygen worth Rs 1,50,000 annually. The oxygen released per day is 1400 litres. It’s important that each Bangalorean plants a tree a month.
Viswanathan of rainwaterclub.org, Priti Kadam of IBM, Capt Dayalu of TESCO and Madhuri Subba Rao of Reuters shared best practices which can be implemented across organisations. The event culminated with an ideation session to check global warming. Nearly 100 ideas were generated and for companies to implement.
LogicaCMG also assured assistance to the International Facility Managers Association (IFMA) to create a portal for companies to share best environmental practices. Participants pledged their commitment to ensure continuity of the ‘WE’ forum. The event is to held on a quarterly basis and TESCO will host the next one.
A symbolic tree planting ceremony was also organised