Time for next generation sustainability efforts? Global Reporting Initiative marks 20th anniversary

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) announced that the anniversary sees it also lay out a ‘refreshed course’ to help more businesses use sustainability reporting to create the conditions for sustainable development.

“The first 20 years of GRI have been a phenomenal success, but the practice of sustainability reporting needs to evolve,​” said Tim Mohin, Chief Executive, GRI.

“The point of sustainability reporting is for companies to increase transparency around critical topics that stand in the way of progress towards a sustainable and inclusive global economy.​”

Why rate companies on sustainability?​

According to GRI, thousands of organizations in more than 100 countries already use the GRI reporting framework to disclose non-financial information to their stakeholders, and manage their impacts on the economy, the environment and society.

With sustainability now a key point of focus across the beauty and personal care industry, companies from right across the supply chain now look for ways to evidence their efforts.

Time for next generation efforts?​

GRI suggests that these practices now need to evolve to a new level, and says it intends to ‘leverage its global multi-stakeholder network to drive the evolution of sustainability reporting.’

To do this, GRI says it will focus on improving the quality of sustainability reporting, providing preliminary reporting guidance on sustainability topics that are new to the corporate reporting field, increasing reporting among small and medium-sized enterprises and promoting harmonization in the corporate reporting landscape.

“We need far more organizations to disclose information on their sustainability impacts, and we need them to make their reporting more concise, consistent, current, comparable and also forward-looking​,” says Mohin.

“GRI is the global leader in sustainability disclosure and we see it as our responsibility to mobilize this transformation.”​