Corporate Reporting
(Annual Corporate Reports, DJSI, CDP, Walmart Gigaton, Stakeholder Questionnaires)

What

Public disclosure of environmental impact information takes a variety of forms, some initiated by the company responsible for the impacts, and some that report on companies without their direct submittal.

As an example of the differences in approach, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) collects submittal data from companies using a very extensive questionnaire, that has grown in its complexity almost every year. It covers a company's direct (Scope 1) and indirect (Scope 2 and 3) impacts. The process initially focused on carbon, but several years ago this effort was expanded to cover water usage as well.

At the other end of the spectrum, other reporting frameworks such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) and the Newsweek Green Rankings receive all or part of their input from publicly reported data, such as that published in Corporate Sustainability Reports, SEC Filings, and even what is posted on a company's website. In recent years DJSI has added a more direct survey aspect to its public data gathering process. Inclusion in these many of these comparative measurement exercises is by invitation based on performance relative to others.

Why

Companies who participate in a scoring process such as CDP, DJCI, or that publish a Corporate Sustainability Report seek a more favorable treatment in the marketplace by customers, as well as by stakeholders and investors.

As more and more companies report on a volunteer basis, the level of peer pressure to do so will continue to increase.

How

The process of reporting will depend on who is doing the work - the evaluating third-party, or the company itself. For corporate sustainability report development, the level of effort can be quite high.

For CDP reporting, which is much more mature than the process of corporate sustainability reporting, the effort to complete the questionnaire is significant, but to reach a favored status compared to peer companies, much more significant effort is to measure impacts comprehensively, and to take action to reduce impacts over time. The protocol to measure and the types of questions asked have evolved over the past five years.

To continue to compete favorably, in addition to having a good understanding of its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, a company will need to measure its Scope 3 carbon emissions resulting from the development of its raw materials, as well as the use phase and end of life phase for its products. This can be done product-by-product; but increasingly companies are approaching this on a business unit level.