Sustainability reporting moves up British business agenda

While 70% of British businesses identify sustainability as a key driver for growth, only 51% believe that sustainability issues will impact their firm’s financial performance over the next two years, finds a new report.

However, businesses that have made the connection between sustainability and business performance are willing to invest in internal teams to manage and deliver sustainability with81% of the respondents saying that they have more than five staff members dedicated to sustainability at a programme management level.

The report by sustainability analysts Verdantix was commissioned by the BSI, the business standards company, to discover how the challenge of sustainable development is really being addressed by businesses.

David Fatscher, head of market development for sustainability at BSI commented: “Although the results show broad acceptance amongst organizations that sustainability is a relevant issue, British industry still has plenty more to do before sustainability becomes business as usual. But we are encouraged that reporting performance on sustainability metrics such as energy, carbon and social responsibility, is moving up the agenda.”

Indeed, sustainability performance reporting is now common practice for large UK firms and 100% of those surveyed plan to publish a sustainability report in 2014, with 91% integrating financial and sustainability data into their annual report. The most commonly reported sustainability data will be carbon emissions (99%), energy (98%), and social responsibility (93%). A large majority will report on waste (77%), water (77%) and other greenhouse emissions (77%). 

Picture credit: © Andrey Burmakin | Dreamstime.com