Difficulties in finding and analysing sustainability data together with the lack of standard sustainability reporting practices are issues that are seen as hampering initiatives in the area, new research has revealed.
According to an Oracle-funded study by The Future Laboratory, corporations are beginning to focus on sustainability as a way of improving their business operations and recognise that initiatives such as cutting air freight, promoting video conferencing and curbing energy use saves money and reduces the carbon footprint.
“Most organisations now have programmes to lower waste, reduce power usage and encourage recycling, and these easy-wins still dominate,” the report’s author Emma Clarke told us.
One problem encountered by organisations is the difficulty of measuring the impact and reporting on the effectiveness of their sustainability efforts.
The study shows company-wide initiatives struggle to gather and interpret data, with over half of businesses citing the collection of information from internal sources as being a major barrier to sustainability reporting.
From another angle, 33% rank data collation and 45% rank presentation of sustainability data as very difficult, with a majority relying on spreadsheets.
“Another 29% of companies admit their main concern is merely to gain an understanding of their carbon footprint, which suggests a good number are struggling to identify a straight forward process to follow,” the report noted.
According to Frank Buytendijk, VP for enterprise performance management at Oracle, current processes aren’t designed to capture the data that is necessary for sustainability reporting.
He argues that all the relevant data is already available in enterprise systems, however. “It should be possible to develop standards and definitions for reporting carbon footprint data, and it should be as easy to track carbon as it is to track costs in activity-based accounting processes.”
Clarke of The Future Laboratory added that legislation is helping drive continued interest in sustainability projects.
The UK has committed to the world’s first legally binding ‘carbon budgets’ which will require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of 34% by 2020.
She said the study had found 56% of businesses surveyed state increasing climate change-related regulation and standards are a clear stimulus to work on sustainability measures.
For Oracle’s Buytendijk this means only one thing. “Regulation on the horizon is going to make sustainability a key reporting requirement and businesses need to start preparing now to ensure they get it right from the beginning. Data will need to be handled with a greater level of rigour to provide an accurate picture of performance and satisfy auditors.”
The experts say that a good starting point is the Global Reporting Initiative, which has pioneered the development of a sustainability reporting framework.
Around 3,000 organisations are already using the GRI guidelines, which contain principles and standard disclosures that should help outline a disclosure framework organisations can voluntarily and incrementally adopt.
