Business heads to join CII sustainable growth initiative
As many as 36 business heads here have expressed their willingness to be part of Confederation of Indian Industry’s (CII) “Mission on Sustainable Growth” initiative.They signed at the “CII-Code signature campaign” at the CEOs meeting organised here on Thursday to launch the initiative. C.R. Swaminathan, Chairman of the CII (Southern Region), said the CII Code for Ecologically Sustainable Business Growth had 10 main points. Aimed at involving the top management and sought voluntary commitment from them to meet targets set by them for their companies. Over 200 companies were signatories to the initiative.
The objective of the initiative was to promote conservation of natural resources in Indian industries without compromising on accelerated growth.The Mission had identified 10 high impact, focus sectors based on the consumption of energy and water and emissions.
The identified sectors included engineering and automobile, power plants and iron and steel units.The CII had also conducted an ecological footprint study for India and was doing an ecological footprint study for key sectors and select companies as a pilot project.
The CII aimed at getting 500 signatories for the initiative by June 2009.S. Raghupathy, Senior Director and Head of CII’s Green Business Centre, said the 10 main points in the code were: water and energy reduction, waste reduction, renewable energy increase, green house gas emission reduction, increase in recycling materials, increase in rain water harvesting, green purchase policy, life cycle assessment of new products and technologies, product stewardships programmes and reduction in other natural capitals.
While the last four points were futuristic and required detailed planning, the first six measures could be easily acted upon by the companies. The CII also helped the companies in implementing the code, if required.
The implementation could be in three phases.The CII planned to quantify the benefits and showcase the results, he said.
