Green Issues

In a move to cut costs, Zain has moved to embrace IT and go green by launching an E-Bill service. Its hardly anything new, but its a much welcomed move.

In this part of the world, environmental concerns are taken as an elitist Wangari Maathai thing. In fact, going green and environmental issues; forests aside, can be regarded as an alien concept.

The cost-cutting aspects for E-bills, virtual top-up cards and the like are fairly obvious but in many other cases, the environmentally friendly aspects are much less evident.

Last time I checked, not even the self-proclaimed green company, Safaricom, really pays close attention to the environment. Why? Top-up cards are probably the most notorious pollutants around. Surprisingly, not even a simple "bin" icon to promote proper disposal is present on the all popular scratch cards.

NEMA should really have a massive campaign for promoting other environmental issues outside the wetlands and reafforestation issues. The campaign behind the KEBS quality mark provides a favourable starting point.