Coca-Cola, which fought a protracted legal battle with a panchayat in Kerala over the right to use groundwater, pledged to launch at least 20 water conservation projects across India.
A company spokesperson said the projects were aimed at recharging ground water and added these initiatives would touch one million people in 60 cities. The company had to shut down its plant in Plachimara in Kerala for years after the panchayat dragged it to court for allegedly causing pollution and unbridled use of water.
Rival PepsiCo, on its part, announced a pan-India waste-management project that will try to change India's image as the country with some of world's filthiest cities. A recent survey had put Mumbai at the seventh slot and New Delhi at the 24th position in its list of world's dirtiest cities. PepsiCo's plans are designed on its experience of three such successful projects in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, respectively "We have already impacted 150,000 households and our plans this time will impact 100,000 more people," said a company spokesperson. The project was being launched in collaboration with Exnora, an NGO, he said.
Leading watchmaker Titan Industries Ltd announced the launch of its new range of watches that would be designed after some of India's endangered species like tigers and river dolphins. The project is being undertaken in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund-India. "The collection will be in 12 different styles and will be launched in September,'' said Chief Operating Officer Harish Bhat.
Hewlett Packard, a global information technology giant, unveiled a plan to create a software to make computers more environment friendly. Surabh Kedia, who heads the team working on the project, told Business Standard the software would be ready within a month. "It will reduce consumption of energy and thus cut the emission of greenhouse gases," he said. He added the company was aiming at cutting down emissions by 15 per cent by 2010. "We may even register this as a clean development project under the UN regime,'' he said. The software, he said, would come with HP computers at no extra cost.