Counting the green numbers for firms

Sprih has become one of the early movers in helping businesses measure, report and devise strategies for sustainability

- Namita Shibad

PUNE: Sustainability, green tech, carbon dioxide, water, plastic, waste — all these are just words unless they get translated into action. And while everyone and even the government authorities have begun acting on becoming "green", it is easier said than done. Particularly for a corporate body that has far too many factors to look into to achieve a net zero status that the government aims to reach by 2070.

While there is no single law that mandates specific actions towards this goal, the government via its existing laws and policies like the Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act 2022, is helping companies move towards carbon credit trading.

But how is a corporate body to even know that it is carbon negative or positive? How does it calculate the emissions its factories emit, the energy its air conditioning uses, the fuel its company buses use, the plastic waste, its discarded laptops' load on our planet?

The question that was to become the problem statement of the company—Sprih—four friends founded was somewhere in the back of their minds when they first met at a sapling plantation event organised by an NGO 14 Trees. Akash Keshav, Rohit Toshniwal, Hemant Joshi and Ravi Singhal met on a Sunday to plant saplings that led to the question—how can a company calculate its carbon emissions? How can they devise a plan towards becoming sustainable?

Casual conversations became deeper when the four realised that there was a need for companies to know how to calculate where they are on the carbon map and how to get to becoming a "green" company.

Akash said, "We saw that there was nothing available really. Add to that was the declaration of the Business Responsibility and Sustainability Regulation (BRSR), 2021 that mandated listed Indian companies to file sustainability report in a standardised format.