In this post, Elaine analyzes the GRI’s own sustainability report, asking what extent GRI Stakeholders should be content with a report about direct impacts and outputs (the things that the GRI is saying, doing, using) versus a report about the outcomes the GRI can reasonably claim to have influenced.
In this post Elaine writes about this just released comprehensive review by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) of what it has been doing between July 2009 and June 2010. It covers such topics and events as the well attended third GRI conference in Amsterdam in May 2010where the GRI announced its goal that large and medium sized companies should by 2015 be required to report on their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance. It goes on to cover in greater detail the various specifics that are included in this GRI review.
In this post, Elaine describes the new Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 3.1 guidelines covering the new GRI Technical Protocol. The 3.1 guidelines are a stepping stone to the big promise of G4 in 2013 and address just three specific aspects of the current G3 framework relating to: community impacts, human rights and gender equality. The post then goes into more detailed commentary and explanation on each of these three issues.
Twitter has done a great deal for CSR communications. The social network brings CSR leaders closer,facilitates networking, as well as partnership creation, and dealmaking. Twitter gets the news and information out about CSR conferences out to a larger audience, as well as being the absolute best source of CSR news. CSR reports are always announced on Twitter and it is used as a CSR jobs recruitment platform too. It is also used to promote brands, customer service, or to announce new products and services, which all these link to CSR as well. This is all helping to create greater interest in the CSR body of knowledge. Ultimately, Twitter makes CSR info accessible to more people and it is changing the way people view it.
What kind of jobs are available in sustainability, what kind of education and experience are required, will sustainability persist or will it fade away? Such questions lead one to ask what is sustainability? Multiple people have multiple definitions depending on their unique take on it. The triple bottom line is emerging as a defining conceptual explanation for what sustainability means, but widespread understanding of what this means remains somewhat shallow. This post suggests some of the expertise aspiring sustainability professionals should have.
This post poses the question whether or not reporting is a waste of time and then continues by showing three varying examples of where the GRI reporting is incomplete in very important ways and does not include critical data that is needed in order for the report to give a clear and actual picture of what kinds of waste are being generated and how they are being handled (or not handled). Elaine concludes by providing an example of what she feels is a GRI report, by Vestas, that provides clear numbers, clear narrative, clear graphics, clear reporting, in conformance with EN22 performance indicator.
Exceeding and defining industry standards – or even business standards in general – is one way that forward thinking companies will leverage their efforts from the existing guidelines and do more. Doing so will establish that they are not ‘toeing the line’ but rather ‘raising the bar’.
Often green washing is not an outright attempt to be deceptive, but rather stems from failing to consider environmental impact measures with the same robust attention as is usually given to more established and familiar measures of business performance.
New figures released recently show that the number of companies and other organizations publicly disclosing their performance against a range of key sustainability indicators has risen markedly over the last year. The Global Reporting Initiative is now tracking of over 1000 organizations worldwide who issued sustainability reports based on the GRI G3 Guidelines in 2008 – the highest number ever recorded. The figure represents an increase of 46 per cent on the 2007 figure of 685.
