Due to growing concerns about the legitimacy and viability of business practices, businesses were more and more solicited by NGOs and administrations to not anymore only report on their financial health but also on the environmental impact of their activities and the respect of the Human Rights. The first strong international stimuli came from the Brundtland commission in 1987.
The first company to comprehensively report on the environmental impact of its activities was the Norwegian aluminium producer Norsk Hydro in 1989. The following decade saw an outburst of Triple Bottom Line reporting framework standards muddying up the water and clouding the issue for stakeholders. To provide a more readable picture and further enhance responsible decision-making, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was created in 1997, with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the aim of producing an harmonized framework as scalable and routine as financial reporting frameworks are. In 2000 it became a permanent institution, headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Although the GRI is independent, it remains a collaborating centre of UNEP and works in cooperation with the United Nations Global Compact.
The GRI reporting framework is now recognized worldwide as being one of the most prevalent standards for Sustainability Reporting or Triple Bottom Line reporting. This acceptance stemming from the way it was established and devised, that is through a multi-stakeholder, consensus-seeking approach. Thanks to this approach, a broad cross-section of the society – business, civil society, labour, accounting, investors, academics, governments, and others – from all around the world agreed on what the guidelines should contain and what the sets of indicators should be, subsequently paving the way for its large acceptance. Indeed, in January of last year, more than 1,500 organizations spanning 60 countries were using its guidelines to release their sustainability reports, be it corporate businesses, public agencies, smaller enterprises, NGOs and/or industry groups.
Guidelines have been upgraded three times to allow for an always broader coverage of environmental impacts and social aspects. The G3 guidelines standing for “Third Generation” and launched in October 2006 thereby build on the G2 guidelines (released in 2002) themselves being an evolution of the initial guidelines, initially set up in 2000. A comprehensive version of the G3 GRI guidelines are available here.
On environmental performances, companies have the opportunity to report upon a 16-core-indicator suite along with an extra 19-additional-indicator suite formulated in the G3 GRI. These two indicator suites encompass nine core aspects as depicted in the following table:
The comprehensiveness of a GRI TBL report can be of three levels: A, B or C; A being the most thorough. In addition, a report can either be self-declared, third-party-checked or GRI-checked. In the two latter cases, the declaration is annotated with a "+". For instance, a B+-compliant G3 GRI report is a third-party or GRI-checked B-level compliant report. The difference between the three different levels is summed up in the figure below.
The GRI framework being a UN-backed programme, eCO2labs fully acknowledge its reliability and transparency. Some of our data points will thus be sourced from GRI-checked reports with the objective to provide you with an even more readable overview of environmental practices across a wide cross-section of businesses around the world.
RW
The first company to comprehensively report on the environmental impact of its activities was the Norwegian aluminium producer Norsk Hydro in 1989. The following decade saw an outburst of Triple Bottom Line reporting framework standards muddying up the water and clouding the issue for stakeholders. To provide a more readable picture and further enhance responsible decision-making, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was created in 1997, with the support of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with the aim of producing an harmonized framework as scalable and routine as financial reporting frameworks are. In 2000 it became a permanent institution, headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Although the GRI is independent, it remains a collaborating centre of UNEP and works in cooperation with the United Nations Global Compact.
The GRI reporting framework is now recognized worldwide as being one of the most prevalent standards for Sustainability Reporting or Triple Bottom Line reporting. This acceptance stemming from the way it was established and devised, that is through a multi-stakeholder, consensus-seeking approach. Thanks to this approach, a broad cross-section of the society – business, civil society, labour, accounting, investors, academics, governments, and others – from all around the world agreed on what the guidelines should contain and what the sets of indicators should be, subsequently paving the way for its large acceptance. Indeed, in January of last year, more than 1,500 organizations spanning 60 countries were using its guidelines to release their sustainability reports, be it corporate businesses, public agencies, smaller enterprises, NGOs and/or industry groups.
Guidelines have been upgraded three times to allow for an always broader coverage of environmental impacts and social aspects. The G3 guidelines standing for “Third Generation” and launched in October 2006 thereby build on the G2 guidelines (released in 2002) themselves being an evolution of the initial guidelines, initially set up in 2000. A comprehensive version of the G3 GRI guidelines are available here.
On environmental performances, companies have the opportunity to report upon a 16-core-indicator suite along with an extra 19-additional-indicator suite formulated in the G3 GRI. These two indicator suites encompass nine core aspects as depicted in the following table:
The comprehensiveness of a GRI TBL report can be of three levels: A, B or C; A being the most thorough. In addition, a report can either be self-declared, third-party-checked or GRI-checked. In the two latter cases, the declaration is annotated with a "+". For instance, a B+-compliant G3 GRI report is a third-party or GRI-checked B-level compliant report. The difference between the three different levels is summed up in the figure below.
The GRI framework being a UN-backed programme, eCO2labs fully acknowledge its reliability and transparency. Some of our data points will thus be sourced from GRI-checked reports with the objective to provide you with an even more readable overview of environmental practices across a wide cross-section of businesses around the world.RW
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