Sustainability Reporting and Corporate Responsibility in Australia

The Australian Government has taken a number of important steps to encourage environmental and sustainability reporting among companies in this country.

Environmental and sustainability reporting is becoming increasingly common among very large companies: 45% of the Global Fortune Top 250 companies now publish such reports.

Corporate reporting is the voluntary public presentation of information about an organisation's non-financial performance - environmental social and economic - over a specified period, usually a financial year.

A report may be published as a stand-alone document, on a company web site or incorporated into an annual report. The release of a corporate sustainability, environmental or health and safety report is seen as increasing transparency and therefore accountability.

Current global initiatives on sustainability reporting involve governments, industry bodies, non-government organisations and companies taking individual action.

Good sustainability reporting is now recognised by awards in Australia and overseas.

Follow this link for more information on corporate sustainability reporting (opens in a new browser window)

The State of Sustainability Reporting in Australia Project

This is the third annual report in a series covering sustainability reporting by Australia’s largest companies. The Centre for Australian Ethical Research (CAER), in collaboration with KPMG and Deni Greene Consulting Services, has conducted this project for the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage (DEH).

The project involved gathering information on sustainability reporting activities from:

• companies in the S&P/ASX 300 index:
• the top 100 private companies; and
• the top 100 unlisted public companies.

A broad range of corporate non-financial reports was considered under the heading of ‘sustainability reports’, including triple bottom line reports, environment reports and community reports.

Of the 486 companies researched for this project, 119 companies (24 percent) are producing sustainability reports, representing a continued increase on previous years.  There appears to be a world-wide trend to greater use of sustainability reports instead of environment-only reports and this is evident in the Australian results.

The number of Top 500 companies producing sustainability reports in Australia has continued to increase, albeit more slowly than for the previous years.

Follow this link to download the State of Sustainability Reporting in Australia 2005 (opens in a new browser window)

The Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) of the United nations Environment Program is a long-term, multi-stakeholder, international process whose mission is to develop and disseminate globally applicable Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

These Guidelines are for voluntary use by organisations for reporting on the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of their activities, products, and services.

For further information

Contact	:	Andrew Ross, Department of the Environment and Heritage
Address	:	GPO Box 787 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia
Phone	:	02 6274 1590
Fax	:	02 6274 1600
Email	:	andrew.ross@deh.gov.au