Green Planet Episode 8: Green Best Practice

Green Best Practices could dwelve a little more on the many components referred to by Chris from Forrester Research. It is a more comprehensive look at ICT companies not just from the greening of ICT technologies and usage (energy efficiency, taking toxicity out, etc) and helps distinguish this episode from those already covered by the other episodes.

This could include more of the CSR component and about "walking the talk". Chris referred to some aspects of this, when he spoke about telecommuting, encouraging employees to take public transportation, etc. Juniper for instance also has a comprehensive Green Best practices (they have received many Green awards for this), which include working with the local electrical company to cut down on aircon consumption on hot days to do their part to help electrical shortage in the region, cutting down on use of paper, using ICT as a tool for teleconferencing, giving free public transportation passes to employees, having electric vehicle charging stations, greening of data centres, greening their supply chain, etc etc. Google, Telefonica, Telstra, BT, Samsung and other such forward looking companies also use solar and wind to power their main campuses on top of these other green CSR practices.

Meanwhile, there are some sustainability indexes that exists (Global Sustainability Index, Dow Jones Sustainability Index,NASDAQ sustainability index, etc), and many companies are already reporting these in their annual reports. The next step is to find common KPIs or score cards to be able to compare Best Green Practices and CSR overall.

Yes, CSR makes good business sense. BT alone found that CSR practices saved them 2.2 billion pounds.Green Best Practices can be a good way to access a company as a whole, make sure they walk the talk and help avoid greenwashing.