[honeybee]

Today's Economic Times carries an interesting article on Tata Motors' quest to find out the environmental impact of their cars, not just out of the tailpipe emissions, but the over the entire lifecycle - right from mining the raw materials.

You can see the complete article here:

Real Green Cars: Now, Tata Motors has stepped out of the box with its life-cycle assessment

The $42-billion Tata Motors, India's largest automobile maker, is one of the few companies infusing life-cycle thinking within and across its vendors. It's about time too. Globally, the transportation sector accounts for over 23% of carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion. In a business- as-usual scenario, it is expected to grow by 40% from 2007 to 2030. Road sector emissions dominate transport emissions. In India, it's 87% with aviation at 7% and railways at 5%. "How the auto sector embraces sustainability therefore has a deep bearing on the environment," says Rajesh Kumar Singh, MD of thinkstep in India, a Germany- based sustainability performance measurement company.

Some small steps which were an outcome of the exercise:

The learnings were huge and numerous hotspots were identified and eventually rectified. For instance, returnable packaging was introduced for an intake manifold transported to Sanand. Polypropylene caps used to cover certain components to prevent ingress of dust were earlier discarded; now they are reused over and over again.

They do look like small steps when viewed in isolation, but imagine the environmental impact when an entire corporation adopts these steps.

It is heartening to see an Indian automobile company not just pursuing the impact of their production on the environment, but coming out in the open about it.