Alfa CNG

Sustainability is the new buzzword today as companies actively seek to reduce their carbon footprint and invest in creating eco-friendly products and solutions. As eco-strategy expert, Andrew Winston, puts it, 'a green wave is sweeping the business world' as organizations increasingly realize the importance of going green.

Sustainability and sustainable issues have traditionally been viewed as an extension of a company's CSR programme. However, this perception is undergoing a distinct change today as companies realize that sustainability can lead to wealth creation.

According to Andrew, who has incidentally co-authored a book on this topic with Dan Esty of Yale University titled 'Green to Gold', the best companies are innovatively focusing on sustainability to create value in four fundamental ways - It can help drive new revenues, enhance brand value, cut costs through eco-efficiency measures and reduce risks related to changing consumer tastes and regulations.

Ecomagination

GE has already shown the way with its innovative venture, Ecomagination which illustrates its commitment to develop products and solutions that address environmental challenges and generate profitable growth. Ecomagination focuses on key areas of the company's business including energy, technology, manufacturing and transportation.

Products developed under the Ecomagination brand include locomotives for use on China's mainline rail system which reduce emissions and are more fuel efficient than other locomotives, LED traffic and road signals which result in significant energy savings and require lower maintenance and innovative wind turbines.

Ecomagination products have resulted in substantial revenues running into billions of dollars for GE, making it one of the company's most successful initiatives. This is a clear example of how sustainability can help create profits for stakeholders.

Closer to home as well, there are several companies which have taken the initiative to both reduce their carbon footprint and harness the power of sustainable solutions for the greater common good. Mahindra, for instance, has launched several eco-friendly products such as India's first bio-diesel tractor, the Alfa CNG, which is a dynamic three wheeler cargo carrier and the Bijlee, the first-of-its-kind electric three wheeler in India. Most recently, M&M launched the environment friendly Bolero Pik-Up CNG, the first CNG model to be launched in the large Pickup category which offers savings of up to 40% on costs as compared to a comparable diesel vehicle.

So how can companies make sustainability work to their advantage?

Andrew Winston suggests three initial steps:

• Companies must first understand how their business impacts the environment across the value chain. Do suppliers, for instance, follow environment-friendly practices?

• Organizations also need to know what others think of their environmental performance. This would include perceptions held by employees, customers and perhaps even NGOs.

• Last but not the least, businesses must take stock of their core competencies when it comes to creating environment-friendly and energy-efficient products and actively work towards developing the same.

I think this poster says it all.

Is it that difficult??

Forget the Government or the environment NGOs – They are all doing whatever it takes to spread awareness and literally Clean up! (I shall give my views on that campaign some other time).

Just ask yourself this:

In the tons of litter found on the road, does that one wrapper on the road, belong to me?
Is that one cigarette butt mine?
 
Littering is an involuntary habit for most of us. You can in fact, say that it’s like going to the gym for that one more day, or more aptly, its like you trying to stop biting your nails – but you somehow never realize how you got those abnormal blunt looking nails!

None of us WANT this city to be a garbage dump. No way.
But we need to unlearn, and hurl out the habit – of littering our streets.
And this change is going to be tough and a conscious one (It definitely was for me)

Excuse me for this gyan, but I believe there are 2 broad steps to this one:

Step One: STOP LITTERING YOURSELF!

Get a grip on yourself, be it a chocolate wrapper, no matter how small, a bus ticket, an expired movie stub, nothing goes down the road. If you don’t find a Bin, shove those in your pockets, handbags, or purses.


Step Two: IT IS OKAY TO TELL OTHERS TO STOP LITTERING

This is even tougher, but you don’t mind doing it if you have mastered step one!


The Mahindra Way

Our Employee Volunteers at various Mahindra Tractor and Auto plants and at our Club Mahindra offices in rustic areas often do exactly this - several clean up drives, waste management workshops, anti-plastic drives etc around their localities - and here lies the importance – of just TELLING people and making them conscious about their own habit.

My escapades in the Mumbai locals have taught me two ways to do this: Sounds simple, but it requires guts.

a)    Request at first – This works with the mellow-looking ones
“Excuse me, could you please not throw this on the ground? Please use the dustbin”

You may get 2 broad types of reactions to the above:

•    An embarrassed apologetic ‘sorry!’ (your purpose is served, congratulations!)
•    You get an angry look, or… an even more angry retort .. slander .. Or even an outright tirade.

In any case, NEVER lose your cool.

b)    The last and in some cases the best option is the non-violent method –
SOMETHING YOU MUST DO IN FRONT OF THE ONE WHO IS LITTERING –
SOMETHING THAT WILL SURELY EMBARRASS HIM/HER –
& something that they will never forget

Wear your best smile and Take it to the Basket yourself!  :)

Many of you would have read the article "Save the Girl Child, pleads Manmohan" in Times Of India on April 29th, 2008. I couldn't help but agonize over it. Here we are living in the 20th century, the year is 2008, and to hear such a plea from the Prime Minister of our country to stop the "inhuman and uncivilized practice" of female foeticide depicts the truly remorseful state of girls in our nation. India's child sex ratio (i.e. number of girls per 1000 boys ) is only 927, and states like Punjab and Haryana are among the worst offenders with child sex ratios of only 798 and 819! The norm is usually a higher number of girls compared to boys.
 
While our government is tackling this grievous situation by cracking down on medical practitioners and enforcing the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostics Techniques Act which makes it illegal to reveal the sex of the child before it is born, is this the sustainable solution?

How about empowering the girl child by educating her? Discrimination against the girl child may begin before the girl is born in India, but it persists in the event she is allowed to be born. She is normally housebound and as a result of gender stereotyping is confined to doing household chores such as cooking, cleaning, fetching water, looking after younger siblings or elderly and sick relatives. Education is considered to be of secondary importance, and is only given consideration if there are no costs attached to it. While government schools are free, parents balk even at the costs of uniforms, notebooks etc and would rather not send their girls to school than pay for these. It's no wonder then that the drop out rate for girls in India even at primary school level is almost 40%!

While many Not for Profits are working on stemming this drop out rate, the Mahindra group, through their Nanhi Kali project, have encouraged corporates and individuals to participate in this change process by sponsoring a girl's education. For a sum as little as Rs 1800 or $65, the Nanhi Kali project provides not only academic support to the girls but also provides them with material support in the form of uniforms, school bags, notebooks and even underclothes. Our implementation partner, Naandi Foundation works within the community and sensitizes them on gender issues.

On a recent trip to a Nanhi Kali project area in an impoverished tribal area in Udaipur, Anita, a differently abled Nanhi Kali pulled me aside and lead me to her home. The project worker told me that Anita was studying in the 7th Std and is considered the brightest girl in her class. Anita's home consisted of a 2 room muddy hut, of which one room had no walls. The second room was dark, dingy with no windows or ventilation. Apart from a couple of utensils, Anita's house was completely bare. Later I was stunned to hear that the only clothes Anita possessed were the 2 pairs of uniforms given to her from Nanhi Kali!

Anita has the potential to become a software engineer. She has the potential to transform not only her life, but that of her family as well.

Through the Nanhi Kali project, we will ensure this happens. We will educate her, teach her life skills, and groom her to become the role model for her community. Once she becomes independent and a bread winner, and takes care of her family, wouldn't the community look at her with a different mindset? Would they still think of killing their girls?

Or would this triggmer a sustainable change?

Join the Nanhi Kali movement at www.nanhikali.org  to be a part of this change process.

At Mahindra Lifespace Developers Ltd. (MLDL), we are striving to be energy efficient and quality conscious with reference to our products and processes.  We have taken the initiative to "Go Green" for all our Residential Building Projects in India. Four of our projects so far are now registered for the prestigious LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification for green buildings, making us the FIRST Residential Building Developer in India for LEED - Precertification of the Projects. We have also signed an MOU with CII-GBC for feasibility studies for all-ongoing projects.

But what does all this mean for the families that wish to own spaces we build?

We would like to provide avenues and opportunities for them to truly conserve energy and live in an environment that safeguards the future.

In this post we would like to take the opportunity to share with you MLDL's vision for a sustainable future and hope to talk a lot more in our subsequent posts about our green initiatives in more detail.

Green Buildings and its benefits to residents

Green Building is a design and construction practice that promotes the economic health and well being of your family, the community and the environment. A green home incorporates smart design, technology, construction and maintenance elements to significantly lessen the negative impact of the home on the environment in five broad areas as mentioned below and improve the health of the people who live inside.

• Sustainable sites
• Water efficiency
• Energy efficiency and atmosphere
• Environmental Friendly Materials and resources
• Indoor Environmental quality

One of the main benefits of Green Building is that a high-energy low emissivity glass will be installed in all fenestration, which will have low SHGC (Solar Heat Gain Co-efficient). This kind of glass has high light transmission ratio with low shading coefficient and in turn induces more day light effect than normal glasses. Due to low SHGC, entire fenestration system will reduce the energy requirement for indoor air-conditioning substantially in comparison with normal fenestration. 

‘Climate Change’, ‘Global Warming’, ‘Sustainable Development’, ‘Carbon Credits’ have become buzzwords not only for progressive, concerned individuals, hippies and environmentalists but also for entrepreneurs, large corporations and serious business people all over the world. You cannot pick up a newspaper or magazine or turn on the TV today without encountering something related to these topics. So much so that they are beginning to enter the mindsets of people who would not normally consider themselves “eco-conscious”.

In this country we pride ourselves on the fact that recycling is ‘inherently Indian’, a notion that is reinforced by the presence of the neighbourhood ‘raddiwala’ or scrap dealer who collects and stores everything from old magazines and newspapers to radios, keyboards, and light bulbs. We also tend to be quite particular about turning off unused lights and fans and making sure the tap is completely turned off so no water is wasted. It is debatable whether we do this out of our environmental consciousness or because it will actually save us some money in the long-run. To some extent frugality also defines our ‘Indianness’. These are no doubt important habits but they can best be described as ‘baby steps’ in the realm of sustainability and are most certainly not enough. Very few people actually go beyond these initial ‘baby steps’ and end up making this consciousness a part of their daily lives.

If you truly wish to improve the quality of life around you and make your surroundings safer and cleaner then it is important to ask “What is my individual impact on the earth and its finite resources?” There are several resources available online that calculate your ‘ecological footprint’ or ‘carbon footprint’ based on the responses you provide. Your ecological footprint is basically a calculation of how much of the earth’s resources it takes to support your lifestyle. I encourage you to visit http://www.myfootprint.org/en/ and find out your own footprint. It is an interesting exercise and the results will definitely surprise you. My own results are below.

I like to think of myself as an environmentally conscious individual and was disappointed to know that if everyone in the world lived like me, we would need 1.02 Earths which implies that my current lifestyle is not sustainable. My footprint in global hectares is 16.08 hectares which is well above the country average of 6.7 hectares. This is due to 3 major factors:

1) I drive a car often,

2) I travel in airplanes several times a year

3) I am non-vegetarian.

These are the three main reasons why I’m living unsustainably and by simply making changes in one or more of these areas I could definitely reduce my footprint. Being vegetarian for example would lower my footprint dramatically.

According to a study by Redefining Progress (the creators of this particular ecological footprint quiz), “humanity is exceeding its ecological limits by 39%. Or, put another way, we would need to have over one third more than the present biocapacity of Earth to maintain the same level of prosperity for future generations.”

Another online resource enables you to quickly calculate your carbon footprint and compare it with the average for your country. It only takes a minute to calculate so check it out at http://oneminute.zerofootprint.net/. Below is an illustration of my own carbon footprint which shows that I annually contribute approximately 13.81 tonnes of CO₂ (the average Indian’s is less than 2 tonnes of CO₂ per year). Like the Ecological Footprint Quiz this high number is a reflection of my travel and commuting methods as well as my eating habits.

Find out what your impact on the earth is today and you can begin to identify areas in which you can improve your footprint. Both websites provide suggestions and tips to help you to achieve this.

Although the word ‘sustainability’ seems to be appearing everywhere lately, it nevertheless remains a multifaceted issue which resists definition at every turn. Undeniably, however, the basic tenets of sustainability – in which economic, environmental, and social capital are given equal value – are essential to any well run business.  Here at M&M, as is true at nearly every company, we have always stressed the importance of sustaining our economic capital, i.e. promising increasing returns for our shareholders.

 

However, in this changing global business (and environmental) climate, environmental and social issues are now a key concern of many stakeholders. Employees, customers, investors, government agents, the media and numerous others are all keenly aware of how companies impact the environment and the communities in which they operate.

Mahindra and Mahindra has addressed these difficult issues informally in its business plan for a long time. From our Mahindra Hariyali initiative to plant 1 million trees and our forays into alternative fuel vehicles and biodiesel tractors, to our Nanhi Kali programme to provide education for underrepresented female students, we have made great strides to sustain the environment and society, while always working towards economic growth.

In today’s world, however, there is increasing pressure to do it more formally and officially. Sometimes this means putting a name to something that is already occurring; sometimes this means restructuring our business to account for changes in the market related to sustainability issues.  The drivers of these new pressures are many and varied.  Sometimes we are forced to change because of new statutory requirements, so our response is essentially risk mitigation, i.e. we don’t want to face sanction or fines. Sometimes the pressure comes from NGOs or the media, so we are managing a different risk, a blow to our reputation.  When consumers’ evolving demands drive a change (e.g. we offer a new green product or service) we are taking advantage of an opportunity.  While managing the risk associated with sustainability is indispensable for a high performing business, it is the opportunity presented by sustainability that is perhaps most exciting and hopeful.       

In subsequent posts on Mahindra Universe we will discuss how M&M tackles both the risks and opportunities of sustainability issues and how that relates to India as well as the rest of the world.  Additionally, we will explore how the rest of the world and others in India are tackling sustainability and discuss what M&M and others in its situation can learn.

We hope to delve into a diverse array of issues, mirroring M&M’s dynamic and expansive market presence. Architecture and real estate, automobiles, agriculture, information technology, microfinance, and more can, should, and will all be analyzed through the lens of sustainability. We look forward to using this web spot to spark stimulating dialogue, expand our collective learning and possibly even catalyze change in the coming months.