Today it has become important for the corporate sector to follow better environment practices in order to improve its bottom-line. International financial institutions and investors associate poor social and environmental performance with financial risks and liabilities.
Inadequate enforcement laws
It can be assumed that most Indian companies have not yet started giving the required emphasis on the environmental front, partly because of inadequate enforcement laws in the country and partly because political and industrial leaders have not given enough attention to environmental management. In India no centralized database is maintained by the Government. Even the data that is there is not easily available to the public. The available data is also not very credible.
But now the establishment is beginning to take things seriously. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Union Ministry of Power has initiated The Green Rating Project (GRP) for companies based on their consumption of energy. The Confederation of Indian Industry also announced in early November last year that it would rank companies on the basis of their environment friendliness.
Adopt better environment management policies
The Green Rating Project proposes to rate industrial units on the basis of their environment friendliness to encourage companies to adopt better environment management policies.
The key objectives of the Green Ratings Project are development of a transparent rating system which would act as an incentive for them to make environmental management an issue for top management which would realize that good environmental management involves being proactive. Many firms have found the Green Rating Project useful, and if it can be adopted on a wider scale, it will help improve environmental governance in the country.
As industrialization increases, India will see higher levels of pollution and serious efforts will have to be made to prevent it.
It was, however, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which took the first initiative with rating project way back in 1997, covering a sector every two years. The CSE ratings are based on the entire life cycle of a product, right from the source to the consumer.
See video The Benefits of Going Green for Companies
