AMSTERDAM, NL — More companies than ever before filed corporate sustainability reports that meet the Global Reporting Initiative’s guidelines in 2008, but those firms are a tiny minority of the world’s corporations.
With 46 percent growth over 2007 numbers, the GRI reported today that a record 1,002 companies issued sustainability reports based on the organization’s G3 Guidelines in 2008.
Because there is no requirement to inform the GRI that a report has been issued in accordance with its guidelines, the number of GRI-compliant reports in 2008 is likely higher than the reported figure, but still represents a minuscule portion of the world’s corporations, including just 13 percent of the S&P 500 in the United States and 22 percent of the FTSE 100 in the United Kingdom.
Companies filing GRI-compliant reports spanned the globe, although Spain had the highest number of firms reporting with 128. The U.S. landed in second place with 100 reports meeting the standards, and Brazil came in a distant third with 64 reports.
Although GRI-compliant reporting is still a fairly rare occurrence for companies around the globe, studies have shown that it is more common among the world’s top brands, and the GRI guidelines aim to make reports more transparent and put results in context to help make sense of what impacts companies are actually having.
Whether GRI-compliant or not, sustainability reporting is become a common feature of large corporations. In the first half of July alone, we’ve reported on a handful of companies’ annual CSR reports, including Texas Instruments, JohnsonDiversey, UPS, Business for Social Responsibility, and IBM.
Here are the top 10 countries for GRI-compliant sustainability reporting, and the number of companies that filed those reports; more details are online at GlobalReporting.org.
1. Spain, 128
2. USA, 100
3. Brazil, 64
4. Australia, 56
4. U.K., 56
6. Japan, 49
7. Germany, 41
7. South Africa, 41
9. Italy, 38
10. Canada, 36
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