Report Tracks Growth of Corporate Sustainability Reporting

What are the implications when an organization forms solely to research and analyze sustainable investments? It means that institutional investors are requiring corporations to present sustainability performance data in their corporate responsibility reporting. If you haven’t already heard of the organization, meet the Sustainable Investment Research Analysts Network (SIRAN), which has just issued a report on the corporate responsibility initiatives of the S&P 100 companies.

According to the report, more than half of the U.S.’s largest publicly traded companies now report on their sustainability efforts. Over a third integrate elements of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines. The GRI guidelines establish a standard for what should be in a sustainability report. Clearly this group puts pressure on the rest of the S&P 400 to “belly up to the bar.”

To me, the existence of a group like this demonstrates the extent to which sustainability initiatives have graduated out of Environmental Health and Safety departments into the corporate boardroom. Companies are being watched for their efforts to become sustainable and judged based on publishing real metrics, not glossy photos.
Out of the 100 companies:

• 86 have corporate sustainability sites, a 48 percent increase from 2005
• 49 produced a sustainability report in 2007, up 26 percent from 2005
• 41 incorporate GRI standards, a 71 percent increase from 2005
• 34 include a GRI Index in their report, up 70 percent from 2005

The SIRAN study says a sustainability report must include data covering three or more areas of corporate responsibility performance or execution on corporate governance initiatives.
What does this mean? It means your organization’s EHS data needs to be defensible in front of an industry analyst if it courts both institutional and individual investors.

Add comment July 23rd, 2008