The new and evolving metrics that are helping expand the way businesses create, quantify, manage and report their impacts, and the value they deliver.
Ahead of his breakout session on Strengthening Your Brand with Context Based Sustainability at Sustainable Brands '09, Mark McElroy writes on The Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) call for context in all sustainability reporting. While even award-winning sustainability reports have a hard time putting their achievements into context, their relevance relies upon it.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think a sustainability report should actually tell us something about the sustainability performance of the organization it describes. In order to do that, though, it must include context.
On April 30, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will conduct a second public workshop in its continuing efforts to address the question of how sustainability claims in advertising should be handled.
While it's great to see so many companies embracing sustainability reporting, most aren't giving us the whole picture, says Mark McElroy, founder of the Center for Sustainable Organizations (CSO). Mark is no armchair critic, however. CSO has spent the past three years developing a new reporting standard called the Social Footprint, currently being piloted by such forward-thinking companies as Ben & Jerry's. In this SLM interview, Mark discusses the philosophy behind the framework and explains why the Global Reporting Initiative doesn't go far enough.