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People, Planet and Profit – The three pillars driving sustainability focus for Indian IT
People, Planet and Profit – The three pillars driving sustainability focus for Indian IT

June 4, 2021

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TCS yesterday released its plans to reduce absolute greenhouse gas emissions across Scope 1* and Scope 2* by 70% by 2025; and achieve net zero emissions by the end of the decade. Infosys reported it turned carbon neutral in October 2020 30 years ahead of 2050, the timeline set by the Paris Agreement. Wipro is also committed to achieving Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas emissions by 2040 and a 55% reduction by 2030. Tech Mahindra targets to reduce its absolute scopes 1 and 2 GHG (Greenhouse Gas) emissions 22% by 2030 and 50% by 2050 from a baseline year 2016.

Companies are taking various initiatives towards sustainability, which can be broadly classified under the 3 key pillars viz People, Planet & Profit. All these three aspects have been summarized well by Tech Mahindra under the three broad heads – which holds true for the sustainability initiatives taken by most IT companies:

  • Enabling Stakeholders to Rise (People) – Employee Engagement and Retention, Gender Diversity, Integrating sustainability into business, Talent Retention, Learning and Development, Health and Safety, CSR.      Some indicative examples include:
    • Infosys: Over 700,000 students from India’s engineering colleges advance their digital skills on InfyTQ – Infosys’ next-gen learning platform, as part of the company’s social commitment to reskilling and facilitating job creation. Further, it plans to expand reskilling initiatives to empower 10 million plus people with digital skills and 80 million plus lives with technology for good programs in e-governance, healthcare and education.
    • Wipro: Trained over 155,000 employees in digital skills as of FY20 with 61,000 employees made members of TopGear – the social learning and crowdsourcing platform.

 

  • Rejuvenating the Environment (Planet) – Achieve Carbon Neutrality by reducing GHG emission and shifting to renewable Energy, becoming water positive, sustainable waste management. Some of the key initiatives include focusing on use of energy efficient and renewable sources across campuses such as:
    • Wipro - Over the last 5 years, through energy efficiency and renewable energy procurement, it has prevented the equivalent of 425,000 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
    • Tech M: Has installed solar plants at 10 of our facilities saving 5680 MT of CO2. It Bangalore campus is powered by more than 90% of renewable energy.

 

  • Building Enduring Business (Profit) – Includes initiatives related to promoting innovation, realizing opportunities from innovation, connecting with customers, reducing carbon footprint in supply chain.
    • Wipro - Over the last 3 years, through travel substitution and optimization, has reduced business travel emissions by 13,000 tons of carbon. Over the last 2 years, through the Electric Vehicle 100 initiative, it has transitioned 5.4 million kilometers of employee commute away from fossil fuel vehicles. Further, it has encouraged and facilitated carpooling for employees covering 22.7 million kilometers.
    • TCS: In FY20, the company integrated sustainability, safety and environmental requirements in its online vendor management system across the various stages of vendor lifecycle – selection, review and renewal.

What all this reflects is the conscious effort of the Indian IT industry to move towards a sustainable growth, and this belief has only strengthened during the pandemic.

  • "As an early proponent of responsible business, we understand our obligation to integrate ESG factors into what we do, which is only increasing in importance particularly in the wake of COVID-19," said Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder, and Chairman, Infosys, October 2020.
  • "Wipro has a longstanding commitment to social and environmental responsibility, leading a wide range of successful sustainability efforts, including a net zero target. Joining Transform to Net Zero will enable us to share what we have already learned, and multiply the impact of our existing environmental sustainability efforts.This could not be more urgent, because further damage to our ecosystem threatens to disrupt our way of life. Scientists agree that in this decade, the world must halve global greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming to below 1.5°C. Longer-term, the world must reach net zero global emissions in just a few short decades." As quoted in a blog by Thierry Delaporte, August 2020
  • “We are in a unique position to combine our purpose-driven world view with digital innovation to not only drive our own sustainability, but also partner with customers, civil society and governments to lead and shape solutions for a sustainable future,” NG Subramaniam, chief operating officer and executive director, Tata Consultancy Services (June 2021).

With companies committed to work on the sustainability path we would see more such initiatives and achievements in sustainability targets in the coming years with the Indian IT industry being a flag bearer of new innovations in sustainability as well.

Sources: Company Annual Reports and Filings; Press Releases

Notes:

*Greenhouse gas emissions are categorised into three groups, or 'Scopes', by international accounting tool, the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from controlled sources while Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling consumed by a company. Scope 3 includes all other indirect emissions that occur in a company.


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Neha Jain
Senior Analyst

Neha Jain

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