With the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) foraying into sustainability certification with 'ecolabel', the centre has already seen around 10 companies evincing interest for the same.
CIIE on Wednesday announced setting up of a comprehensive sustainability certification body called 'The Green Signal'.
A non–profit organisation, The Green Signal will provide companies with a comprehensive sustainability certificate called 'ecolabel' that assesses their products and services and awards them ratings. On day zero of the launch of the ecolabel, companies like Daily Dump, Neemrana heritage hotels, Blue frog restaurant have already evinced an interest to get their carbon foot printed and work towards securing an Ecolabel. The National innovation foundation (NIF) will also be getting 15 of their products to be certified with an ecolabel.
With a steering committee comprising of national and international experts from the industry and academia, the venture will look into the areas of energy consumption, carbon foot printing, water consumption, waste generation and management and CSR commitments. Launching the website of the venture on Wednesday, Atanu Ghosh, dean, alumni and external relations of IIM-A said, "With more than 377 labels already existing in 200 countries 'eco labelling' becomes crucial in an emerging market like India that is growing by the day. It is a welcome move by the CIIE to become proactive about the need for ecolabeling and come up with this venture."
For a fee of Rs 1000, companies can get tested and certified with an ecolabel by registering online or snail mailing to the Green Signal. Companies would then be graded through testing and data analysis and ratings would be awarded to them with five bars of the logo. The Green signal would then also give a roadmap to the company that has voluntarily approached it to becoming sustainability eligible. no2co2- a Mumbai- based climate change and research and outreach body is the facilitating agency of the start-up.
"Ecolabelling is a voluntary method of environmental performance certification and labelling that is practiced around the world and 'The Green label' is the first initiative of its kind in India that would act as a certification body for products and services on the basis of sustainability. It is a dynamic concept and one that will be constantly aligned with international practices as well," said Sathish Kumar, Energy Efficiency Ambasaadaor, Schneider Electric, one of the members of the steering committee.
