BUSINESS RESPONSIBILITY
Sustainability: A Decade of Meaningful Contribution
Building a sustainable ecosystem for our stakeholders through a responsible enterprise has been part of our ethos since inception. This led us to launch the Infosys Foundation in 1996. Since then, the Foundation has worked tirelessly for over two decades to contribute to education, healthcare, rural development, destitute care, and art and culture.
In 2008, we formally launched our Sustainability Policy and committed to the United Nations to become carbon neutral by FY 2018. We pledged to do this by reducing our per capita electricity consumption by 50%, focusing on renewables as our principal source of energy, and reducing our carbon emissions. In 2014, we became the first IT Company in the world to publish a sustainability report in accordance with the (Global Reporting Initiative) GRI G4 (comprehensive) criteria. The Global Reporting Initiative is the world's most widely used standard on sustainability reporting and disclosure. It is adopted by over ninety percent of the corporations when reporting on their sustainability performance.
In this tenth year of reporting on sustainability, we have achieved 51% reduction in our per capita electricity consumption against the 2008 baseline, a whole year ahead of our target. About 45% of our electricity requirement is being met through renewable energy, and our carbon offset project is well underway. The past fiscal year has brought us several recognitions and strategic partnerships but among our most successful initiatives have been those towards protecting the environment and nurturing 'responsible citizenship' through focused employee engagement. This has enabled us to multiply the impact of our efforts many fold across the larger community./p>
A Green Conscience
In fiscal year 2016, we became the first Indian company to join the RE 100, a collective of the world's most influential companies, committed to 100% renewable power. In fiscal 2017 we successfully executed an onsite solar photovoltaic plant at our campus in Hyderabad that supports two thirds of our energy requirements for the campus. We also joined the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC), an initiative by leaders from across government, the private sector and civil society to expand the use of carbon pricing, and set our internal carbon price at US $10.5 per ton of CO2e. This internal carbon price sets us an ambitious target to reduce our carbon emission and become carbon neutral.
We currently have 11.1 million sq. ft. of built-up area across our campuses that are LEED Platinum rated and makes our buildings energy and resource-efficient. We also received the LEED-EBOM (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - Existing Building Operation and Maintenance) Platinum certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) for our campus in Pune. With this, Infosys Pune becomes the largest campus in the world to achieve this distinction.
Water is a major concern in India, and we at Infosys have steadfastly focused on improving water conservation through the years. We have 270 injection wells and 25 lakes across our campuses in the country. Our smart water metering program is helping us monitor water consumption and plan efficiency programs. We engage in rooftop rainwater harvesting at our campuses, and our combined endeavor has resulted in an 8.33% reduction in per capita consumption of water as compared to fiscal year 2016. Our efforts to meet the commitment of zero waste to landfill and 100% food waste treatment within our campuses have advanced through innovation and automation.
At Zero Distance to Client and Community
Over 1,35,000 design thinkers at Infosys, at Zero Distance (ZD) to our clients and technology, and have successfully undertaken more than 14000 ZD projects. This has leapfrogged our client satisfaction scores to the highest in the last 12 years since the inception of the survey. Zero Bench (ZB), an engagement to leverage the competencies of Infoscions between client projects has seen 25,700+ small projects and around 280,000 sign-ups from 44,000+ Infoscions.
Powering professional and personal aspirations, Compass, our digital platform with over 110,000 users, also boosts learning and intra-organizational networking. The empathy inculcated in Design Thinking has also benefited employee engagement in the community. For instance, our employee-driven CSR undertakes a host of community activities such as delivering food, water, basic supplies and computer education to underprivileged families and children in villages. In 2016, Sneham, our CSR club in Chennai alone touched the lives of 20,864 people and contributed over 119 lakh rupees worth of commodity items to the community.
Our Campus Connect initiative is another example through which we reached out to 416,185 students in 2016. This initiative focuses on improving the employability of engineering graduates across the country by offering training on soft skills and technologies.
The many other rich contours of our approach to business responsibility can be found in our latest Sustainability Report 2017.
