The Indian sustainability leap – Is ‘IT’ on?

In the following article, an IT expert sheds light on what environmental sustainability means for Indian IT companies.

A recent press article that appeared in the Times of India, said that India's spending on GREEN IT and sustainability initiatives will double from $35 billion in 2010 to $70 billion in 2015, according to Gartner, Inc.

India has been the fore-runner for many decades in the IT services and business process outsourcing sector.   According to NASSCOM, IT-BPO sector in India aggregated revenues of USD 88.1 billion in FY2011, generating direct employment for over 2.5 million people, as the industry continued its journey on the core themes identified for the next decade – Diversification, Transformation, Innovation and Inclusion.

The role of sustainability in Information Technology has three aspects to it.  Two of the well understood facets pertain to using IT for going GREEN and other is GREEN IT; the third aspect is the concept of reduction of e-waste and building more environment friendly products.

Indian IT organizations have taken initiative to build solutions for corporate organizations both in India and overseas which are helpful in calculating the metrics related to energy reduction, carbon footprint calculation, carbon footprint reduction and optimization of logistics, energy, water, travel or waste.    Indian IT organizations have also taken a giant leap forward by building solutions around the cloud computing platform for various businesses.   Cloud computing has a direct impact on shaping sustainability due to its architecture of a shared model thus the impact on the environment is lesser compared to the conventional independent infrastructure model that was the order a few years back.

The business leaders in the space of Information Technology have been continuously innovating around sustainability with primary drivers being conservation and cost  reduction.    Recently, IBM in India announced a data center that is completely solar powered.    IndusInd Bank, one of the forerunners in the banking sector in India, has commissioned solar powered ATMs.  

GREEN IT has had a successful uptake in India with the Indian IT organizations proactively seeking ways to reduce energy required to feed their infrastructure. As one can imagine, the associated cost savings have a direct impact on the bottom line of the companies.  Leading IT organizations have been early adopters and have implemented data centers and server consolidation and virtualization for quite some time now.      This is mainly due to the business demands which have gone up for the IT companies and their ability to spend on new technologies.  However, only a few of them have taken the next step of taking the carbon reduction to the end points, like desktops, IP Phones and other allied equipments, though the intention to go that extra mile is pertinently present, the adoption is not as rapid.

The third aspect, viz. e-waste management has been a grey area for many though sectoral leaders like HCL and Wipro have already launched their efforts on this front by creating an eco-system for the safe disposal of e-waste. They have also focused their R&D energies to shape energy efficient products to compete with the Energy Star compliant products from the likes of DELL, Lenovo, HP and ACER.  (ENERGY STAR is a US government-backed program helping businesses and individuals protect the environment through superior energy efficiency).

Several other private organizations are also involved in the safe disposal of e-waste as this is a rewarding business.  However, in reality, adoption leaves much to be desired.   India, at present, generates about 400,000 tonnes of e-wastes annually of which only 19,000 tonnes is getting recycled according to the recent data by hardware manufacturers association, MAIT.

Going forward it is important that awareness is spread to every nook and corner of the country so that people at large are made aware of the hazard of unsafe disposal of e-waste. E-wastes are considered dangerous as certain electronic components contain substances such as lead, cadmium, lead oxide (in cathode ray tubes), toxic gases, toxic metals, biologically active materials, acids, plastics and plastic additives. These substances are considered hazardous depending on their condition and density.   Though Government first notified a policy on e-waste management in 2006, it has now put the onus onto the manufacturers and a new policy will come into effect from May 2012. 

Though the IT Industry is working hard to undertake sustainability efforts in the above three areas, there is a fourth dimension to the sustainability spectrum, Carbon accounting, which is in a nascent stage.

Many companies have already started capturing travel, electricity, water consumption and food wastage data and many of the companies are effectively able to capture and publish this data.   Though this is good, the varied business model of the Indian businesses necessitate the data capture points to change from time to time.   Historically, the various procedures and policies that have been framed and adopted by most businesses in India did not take carbon accounting into consideration as a parameter.  With the global business environment focusing its attention on this important issue, many companies are seriously thinking of adopting this into their system.  

Recently, a large Indian conglomerate mandated their preferred vendors to re-register themselves. As part of the revised registration processes, vendors were required to provide complete information on their carbon footprint data so that the same information could help the organization arrive at their factual carbon footprint when the product is delivered to the end user.    In the IT sector, organizations like Google have already started disclosing their carbon footprint data.  It is only a matter of a few more years when many more corporations both in the IT sector and otherwise will be declaring their carbon accounting data in a more mature way.

One of the large retail chains of the world, TESCO has put in significant efforts over the last several years to determine and define the carbon footprint of every product on the shelves in their various stores.   Taking cue from this, one can safely conclude that in relatively near future organizations will have to include the carbon accounting aspect of every product and raw material that is involved in the supply chain for various sectors.  This would make organizations incorporate new policies and procedures around the electronic format to include the attributes on sustainability.

Organizations will have to start maturing their existing processes and procedures to include carbon accounting in their system and probably the products that are environment friendly will surely find a favorable place in the future business needs of organizations.   IT companies in India are well poised to take advantage of this growing need and their own sustainability initiatives till date are only a first step. 

The author, V.K. Kripanand is the founder of See Beyond Technologies, a sustainability IT firm.

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