Sustainability Reporting Services

Recent years have seen the development of a parallel process, the production of non-financial reports (the reporting of environmental and social performance issues). These present an increasingly wide range of content, from the social impacts of economic activity to ecological footprinting, issues of stakeholder engagement, social and environmental business risk and business strategy.

The production of such reports has grown rapidly in Europe and globally in response to demands from stakeholders including investors, NGOs and employees in addition to the desire of organisations to communicate their sustainability activities.

The development and increasing complexity of approaches to reporting such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has raised both the expectations of stakeholders for completeness, transparency and accountability through reporting and also the challenge for organisations in reporting their own practice.

Our approach, built upon experience advising a number of leading companies, involvement in a range of best practice approaches and in the judging of sustainability reporting awards, is to distil the essence of best practice reporting into clear and simple checklists and guidance. This allows us to present a simple, complete assessment of your current reporting, support new reporters in starting their journeys and advise on how to respond to the increasing demands of reporting initiatives and stakeholder concerns.

Reporting strategy and guidance
Helping you to define what you wish to report and what you need to report. We work with you to develop and drive your strategic approach to reporting and can demystify critical aspects of reporting such as materiality identification (identifying and prioritising significant environmental and social impacts), stakeholder issue mapping and specifying third party assurance.

Reporting reviews, assessment and benchmarking
Building upon our best practice guidance and checklists, we deliver constructive assessment of your current reporting strategy, structure and approach.

We then provide recommendations for future development and where approriate we compare your activities with your peers and competitors.

What does Terrafiniti do?

We work with you to help make your business more sustainable; identifying risks and opportunities, focusing on the things that matter and helping you define your approach (strategy) and practical changes at an operational level (implementation).

What are the problems?

For millennia we have used the world`s natural resources to sustain us but it`s only logical that these resources are finite. Scarcity leads to price rises, hardship and sometimes war. It also leads to increased efforts to find new resources, often with further consequences.

Our increasing and inefficient use of resources has knock on effects including climate change, loss of biodiversity, pollution, poor health and poverty – these in turn exacerbate each other.

The scale of the environmental/social challenge is enormous. We need to fundamentally change the ways things are done to achieve sustainable development. This will need to go beyond resource efficiency to changing the way things are used and made; cradle-to-cradle processes, dematerialisation, product to service etc.

These are global issues – what can we do as a single company?

Single organisations rarely achieve global change. Responding to these issues requires focus first upon what you control (your products, services and operations) and then what you depend upon (resources, energy, partners and suppliers). In addition, it also involves what you influence through relationships, leadership and innovation.

The changes you may be able to make might be incremental (how you do things) or more major (the things you do).

Examples might include your very approach to business, specific projects or products, behavioural change programmes, changes to your value chain, alterations to performance management or governance.

Why should we?

Contributing to a more sustainable future will bring a range of benefits. In the short term you will benefit from enhancement of your CSR credentials, meeting and moving ahead of pressures from regulators and stakeholders and finding efficiency-based cost savings too.

Long term benefits include enhanced stakeholder and investor support, lower risks in your value chain, enhanced brand and reputation, better employee relations and knowing you are doing the right thing for our children and grandchildren.

What steps can we help you take?

We can:

• work with you to identify priorities and to establish or refine your sustainability agenda.
• help ensure that you are fully up to speed on current regulatory requirements and keep you abreast of current thinking and wider trends.
• work with you in identifying actions you can take to help towards a sustainable future and meet your social responsibilities.
• design and implement management, monitoring and reporting mechanisms, to drive performance and communicate progress.
• develop and implement sustainability training about the issues, skills and behavioural changes required to address them.

We also work extensively in sustainability R&D, with companies, universities and NGOs and can bring the benefit of this experience to you.

Sustainability and sustainable development are now common phrases, but organisations use many other terms, to describe their approach to environmental and social issues.

Phrases such as Corporate Responsibility (CR), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability (CRS) and Corporate Citizenship are commonly used and are often assumed to have a variety of different meanings and emphases. In the financial sector ESG (environmental, social and governance) is used for the evaluation of non-financial performance indicators for corporate behaviour and the future financial performance of companies.

Our opinion is that, at their heart, all of these terms refer to the management of environmental and social performance alongside economic performance.

Corporate Social Responsibility is sometimes seen as a softer version of sustainability; perhaps focussed more upon social rather than environmental performance or upon the PR and philanthropic elements of organisational behaviour. However, it can equally support a robust and ambitious set of activities and plans if it is understood as an organisation`s responsibility to perceive and respond to trends, demands, future challenges and opportunities.

Meaningful CSR (or any other such activity) should: be focussed upon core business, address the fundamental dependencies that an organisation relies upon in order to function (resources, energy, a capable workforce, customers able to make purchasing decisions), be able to demonstrate performance applicable to the company as a whole (not just anecdotes and stray examples) and be capable of verification by independent third parties.

In essence therefore, the words that an organisation uses to describe its approach are less important than the way it understands and interprets the implications of environmental and social issues for future activity, demonstrates engagement and interest in the views and desires of stakeholders, displays ambition, understands the value of leadership through individual action and partnership and demonstrates progress over time.

We can help with your CSR commitments:

• Sustainability strategy and management – focus on the important issues and key leverage points.
• Taking action – sustainability training, building capacity, developing sustainable procurement and supply chains.
• Telling your story – engage your staff, communicate your efforts and progress through sustainability and CSR reporting.