Corporate Environmental Responsibility: A Case on ITC Limited

Case Title:

Corporate Environmental Responsibility: A Case on ITC Limited

Abstract:
Corporate environmental responsibility (CER) has been adopted by many companies globally, as a strategic move to outweigh its competitors. The increase in the number of 'green consumers' has forced the business houses to make a serious effort to diversify their products and become responsible 'green' companies. In many developed nations, environmental protection agencies have come up with stringent regulations relating to the accounting and disclosures of environmental issues and measurement of cost of environmental degradation. Many companies of the developed nations have adapted triple bottom line (TBL) accounting to quantify trade-offs between different facets of sustainability. The Indian firms have also recently been focusing more on discharging their responsibility towards environment. The Corporate Management Committee (CMC) of ITC Limited, the largest cigarette manufacturer of India in its 96th Annual General Meeting has approved the relevant financial, environmental, occupational health, safety and the social policies of the company. Presently, the Company has adopted four goals in the area of CER. It included:

1. Performance beyond compliance
2. Carbon positive footprint
3. Water positive footprint
4. Zero solid waste
(reduction, reuse and 100% recycling of all solid wastes).

Moreover, ITC's paperboards and specialty papers division (Tribeni Tissue) has adapted several energy conservation and environment friendly technologies for all its projects. But, above all it can never be ignored that ITC's major source of revenue has been from its cigarette division. This division is involved in production of the cigarette, a product which is dangerous to public health and responsible for environmental degradation. Under this situation, it is therefore to be seen that with the upcoming stringent norms relating to reporting of environmental degradation, how the company will be able to compensate its injury to the environment with its CER values.

Pedagogical Objectives:

• The need for maintaining CER in an organisation.
• To TBL reporting.
• To a measure for the three parameters - economical, social and environmental responsibility.
• To an analysis on whether TBL reporting is a perfect measure for CER investments..

Keywords :  India, Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), Corporate environmental responsibility (CER), Triple bottom line (TBL), ITC Limited, ISO9001:2000, Zero solid waste, Carbon positive footprint, Water positive footprint, Global reporting initiative (GRI), Mission Sunehra Kal, Environmental sustainability, Economic sustainability, Social sustainability, CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development