Wipro ranked top IT company to be eco-friendly

International NGO Greenpeace ranks Wipro as a top Indian IT company in social responsibility towards e-waste, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Aug 13, 2007, 21:30:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

International NGO Greenpeace on Monday ranked Wipro as a top Indian IT company in social responsibility towards e-waste, whereas Zenith and PCS were ranked the lowest. HCL, the biggest player in the Indian, market was second in the ranking of the four top IT companies of India.

Martin Besieux, campaigner of Greenpeace International, said the ranking will help Indian IT companies to make its products more environment friendly, as has been done in Europe following a similar ranking system. Lenovo topped the global ranking in March 2007, after being at the bottom of the table in August 2006. “Lenovo announced its commitment to phase out hazardous chemicals from there products, thereby earning top ranking,” Besieux said.

The ranking was based on the chemical policy and take back policy of the companies. The companies were required to state their policies in this regard on their website. “We wanted the companies to tell people about how environment friendly their products are,” said Ramapati Kumar, toxic campaigner of Greenpeace India.

Wipro got the top ranking as it was the first Indian IT company to provide products compliant with European standards and has also announced phasing out PVC and other toxic elements in personal computers and laptops. While HCL was phasing out some of the hazardous materials from their computers, Kumar said, there was no said policy in this regard from Zenith and PCS, thereby getting the lowest ranking.

India every year generates 146,000 tonnes of e-waste but only one thousand tonnes reach three registered companies. “No one knows where the remaining e-waste goes. It is a dangerous trend considering that India’s sharing in global computer market would rise from two per cent to 13 per cent in the next five years,” he warned. India needs a national legislation to handle its e-waste, Kumar urged.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Stay updated with the latest Business News on Petrol Price, Gold Rate, Silver Rates, Diesel Prices along with Income Tax Calculator