SAP is a company that makes its living providing information tools for businesses to better understand their business through quantitative reporting (including sustainability reporting) and enterprise resource planning software. Hence, one would expect their Annual Sustainability Report to be a highly readable and information-rich document, which is exactly what it is.

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Colgate-Palmolive announced their sustainability objectives leading up to 2015 in a CSR report, Giving the World Reasons to Smile, which centers around the concepts of people, performance, and planet.  Focus areas of improvement are stated as promoting health, contributing to communities, saving water, and reducing climate and environmental impact.

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A new report from the Carbon Disclosure Project, CDP Water Disclosure Global Report 2011: Raising corporate awareness of global water issues presents water findings from 190 companies around the world.

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The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), which has been collecting GHG emissions data from companies for nearly a decade, recently released a report which revealed that there is a gap that exists between the carbon reduction performance of companies and that of their suppliers.

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While at the GreenBiz12 Forum in New York earlier this week, I got a sneak preview of the findings of the new Ernst & Young and GreenBiz Group survey of trends in sustainability reporting.

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In 1999, fewer than 500 companies issued sustainability reports. That number is now over 3,500. Once only a concern for a few niche companies with sustainability as a core value and brand differentiator, corporate sustainability has moved categorically into the mainstream.

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In November 2011, Bill Weihl, left his post as the Green Czar at Google. Weihl oversaw much of Google’s $700M investments in clean energy and was a driving force behind Google’s Green Dream otherwise known as The Impact of Clean Energy Innovation. Now, it seems that Dr. Weihl, a former Computer Science professor at MIT, [...]

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Building a sustainable city – you can’t manage what you don’t measure The nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is home to the world’s largest database of corporate climate change information. CDP provides thousands of organizations and some of the largest international companies a standardized platform to measure, analyze and report greenhouse gas emissions, water use, [...]

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A sense of optimism pervaded the atmosphere in Durban on the penultimate day and final morning of the UNFCCC’s 17th annual climate change treaty talks, according to one solar industry observer. Rumor was that an agreement to commit to the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol and also extend it beyond its 2020 expiration date were within reach.

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By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Cities consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy and are responsible for 70 percent of global CO2 emissions. It will be cities, not individual states or governments, who will need to employ effective urban planning, implement eco-friendly ordinances, reduce emissions, and plan [...]

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For the first time, I had the opportunity to attend the                                                                                   Corporate Responsibility magazine’s [...]

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The title of Chief Sustainability Officer is a relatively new one—the first CSO of a publicly traded company, Linda Fisher of DuPont, was appointed in 2004. It was two more years until Ed Fox became CSO at Pinnacle West in 2006. Out of roughly 7,000 publicly traded companies found on NYSE or NASDAQ, only 29 [...]

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This season’s devastating hurricanes may have raised some red flags for property owners who are considering installing a green roof. But the experience of New York City electric utility Con Edison suggests that a well planned green roof is no more vulnerable to high winds and heavy rains than any other. Triple Pundit covered a [...]

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What do Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway and the Bank of China have in common? They are all large companies refusing to respond to the Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) request to disclose their emissions. Unlike them, 404 global large companies replied to the questionnaire sent to them this year by the CDP, on behalf of 551 [...]

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Beer giant Miller Coors’ water consumption dropped 5 percent between 2009 and 2010. The company’s water to beer ratio now stands at 4.4:1.

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Yesterday my colleague Phil Covington discussed UPS’ 2010 sustainability report. One of the company’s achievements is the first completion of a map of water risk to UPS facilities worldwide, using the WBCD Global Water Tool. Why did UPS do it? Steve Leffin, Director of Global Sustainability at UPS explains: “[in terms of priority]…after carbon comes [...]

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The following is part of a series by our friends at CSRHub (a 3p sponsor) – offering free sustainability and corporate social responsibility ratings on over 5,000 of the world’s largest publicly traded companies. 3p readers get 40% off CSRHub’s professional subscriptions with promo code “TP40“. This is the final post in a 3-part series [...]

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In 2006, Timberland announced an aggressive five-year goal of reducing absolute emissions related to their facilities and employee air travel by 50 percent by the end of 2010. Timberland fell short of its goal, only reaching 38 percent by the end of 2010, but the company is refreshingly frank about their efforts, what held them back, and [...]

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As Andrew Winston pointed out, relative NGO newcomer Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) has rocketed from a germ of an idea in its founder’s imagination to a serious presence in the global economy in just a decade. How? While veteran environmental organizations like Greenpeace encouraged change, the Carbon Disclosure Project made itself integral to change by [...]

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CDP points out that the world’s population is becoming even more and more urban. Cities only occupy about 2% of the world’s land, but house half of its population. Despite the contributions of agriculture to pollution and climate change, the CDP-Accenture report maintains that cities could contribute up to 80% of the globe’s total emissions. The effects are numerous: many of these cities are in coastal areas, making them vulnerable to rising oceans. Health issues are numerous, especially on children and the elderly. Tourism and the local business climate could be affected as well. Not all is lost, however.

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Both GRI and CDP will use the linkage document as a framework for improving their respective guidelines and questionnaires. CDP amends its annual questionnaire annually and can incorporate GRI standards into its framework. Likewise, GRI is working on a new iteration of its framework, and is exploring a new set of guidelines as it pushes for greater ESG and integrated reporting by the end of this decade.

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Google Finance has spoken. Recently, the financial section of Google inserted a new dimension to its “key stats and ratios” section by adding the Carbon Disclosure Rating amongst other well known financial metrics, including profit margin and return on equity, on the main summary page. Why? Who? Where? What the? This is actually rather groundbreaking [...]

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Global warming may be measured in degrees, but climate change is measured in water. All living things depend on it, and the weather, from hurricanes to droughts, is formed by it. So it should come as no surprise that a leading compiler of corporate carbon emissions data is now asking companies for information on their [...]

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By Neil Braun, CEO, The CarbonNeutral Company As US companies transition to a low carbon economy, carbon management represents a new and fundamental challenge for business. How companies respond to this challenge has become a strategic issue that can build or destroy brands and reputations. If companies take on this challenge, carbon management presents an [...]

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A report by the Carbon Disclosure Project reveals optimism among business leaders in tackling global climate change. The economic recession isn’t going to be an obstacle but rather businesses are looking to find new ideas to combat the credit crunch in the environment.

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