Press release - January 17, 2013
New Delhi, January 17, 2013: Greenpeace India welcomes the sustainability report launched by Bharti Airtel last week[1], terming it a stepping stone towards corporate sustainability. Greenpeace India and lakhs of mobile consumers across India had been demanding Airtel to take leadership in cleaning up the telecom sector for past two years.
"We appreciate and congratulate Bharti Airtel for taking the long awaited step towards sustainability with the launch of this report. This is a landmark step towards creating a cleaner and sustainable telecom ecosystem in the country," said Mrinmoy Chattaraj, Campaigner, Greenpeace India. "Now that Bharti Airtel has taken leadership towards sustainability we demand other companies to follow suit and roll out their sustainability plans," Chattaraj added further.
Bharti Airtel in its ongoing dialogue with Greenpeace India has assured of even more detailed and concrete sustainable action plan in coming months. Greenpeace India further demands the telecom giant to set up progressive emission reduction targets, as per the Green Telecom Directive [2], by the year 2015 and 2020, while making long term investment plan in renewable energy sources for their growing telecom tower infrastructure and lead the low carbon race.
Greenpeace has been engaging with the telecom sector in general and Bharti Airtel in particular to focus on managing its energy and carbon by substantially shifting its power generation for network operations to renewable sources, and to proactively advocate for economy-wide policies that combat climate change and increase the use of renewable energy. Last year Greenpeace released the report "Enabling Clean Talking [3]", an economic and environmental road map for implementation of the progressive Green Telecom Directive issued by the Department of Telecom.
Notes to the editor:
1) Airtel's sustainability report- http://www.airtel.in/sustainabilitypdf/sustainabilityreport.pdf
2) TRAI Press Release on notification of Green Telecom Directive http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Press%20Release%20on%20green%20telecom%20January%202012%5B1%5D%20%281%29.pdf
3) Greenpeace report "Enabling Clean Talking"- http://www.greenpeace.org/india/Global/india/report/Enabling-Clean-Talking.pdf
For further information:
Mrinmoy Chattaraj, Campaigner, Greenpeace India, +91 990220 1201, 
Shashwat Raj, Senior Media Officer, Greenpeace India, +91 968686 1974, 
Madhulika Verma, Media Officer +91 9971137736 