The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was founded in 1997 by the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economics (CERES). GRI offers globally applicable guidelines for organizations to report on their economic, environmental, and social performance. The aim is to make sustainability reporting as routine as financial reporting. Regular updates to these standards ensure that companies have a set of best practices to follow when publicly reporting on their positive and negative performance in these areas.
Global Reporting Initiative – A network-based organization that pioneered the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework.
The procurement department, due to their expertise in the supply chain, is usually tasked with collecting data for corporate sustainability reporting. Sustainability reporting has various advantages, including:
1. Improved reputation due to disclosure and transparency
2. Communication with stakeholders
3. Improved performance due to measurements needed for reporting
4. Improved risk management due to monitoring
5. Identification of opportunities for cost savings and improvements
6. Internal motivation