While sustainability is difficult to define, it has been a corporate buzzword for at least two decades. And for the past six years, companies have had at least one formal framework to follow when communicating their sustainability efforts and exposures, that of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an Amsterdam-based nonprofit organization comprising business, government, social advocacy, and other stakeholders.
Now in its third iteration, the GRI framework has brought increasing levels of rigor to the practice of sustainability reporting by providing guidance on everything from how to craft a broad statement of strategy to which specific performance indicators to measure in six comprehensive categories (from environmental issues to human rights to product safety). More than 1,200 companies have followed the GRI framework, and hundreds of others produce sustainability reports based on other guidance or their own criteria.
Source: CFO, http://cfo.com