Sustainability Assignment On GRI Reporting Guidelines

Question

Task:
You are required to watch the following YouTube clips from the GRI Secretariat:
1. The GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards: The Future of Reporting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGqE4OO0_7g&t=3s
2. Introducing the GRI Standards
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDe8Kkh1BrU&t=2s You must also read the Message from the CEO of fictional company Tramalway Industries. You must then prepare a sustainability assessment report for Tramalway Industries.

Answer

Introduction
Background
As per the research on sustainability assignment, the GRI reporting standards are used by different organisations in order to ensure that they are being able to project the impact of the different activities that have been taken into account by the companies using such standards on the economy, environment and the society. The GRI reporting standards are mainly focused on the understanding to be developed on the different types of sustainability measures that have been taken into account by organisations for effective development of the activities without causing a negative impact on the economy, environment and the society. The intention of developing an undertaking on the business sustainability a measure that has been taken into account by the companies under the GRI standards is to address the economy, environment and society in its wide range of components and factors present (Thomas, 2019). The use of business sustainability enables the economy to thrive better by developing opportunities for employment, increasing the rate of GDP growth of the company and ensures that the shareholder and the stakeholders of the company are benefitted. This benefit ranges from the return from the investment, the working performance for the employees, the purchasing done by the customers and suppliers’ deliverance.

On the other hand, the major concern and the reason for the rise in the use of sustainability is the development of the environment. It has been noted in the sustainability assignment that the business processes and activities cause a negative impact on the environment by increasing the emission of greenhouse gases and carbon footprint through manufacturing. The materials of the products that are being sold by the companies are also a part of the processes that leads to the processing of non-degradable raw materials and final products, which causes land, and water pollution at a higher rate (Michalczuk and Konarzewska, 2018). Another major environmental concern outlined in the sustainability assignment, which is attended by sustainable measures of business operations, is the reduction in the change of climatic condition. The manufacturing processes and the usability of the final products further contribute to the changing climatic condition through harmful emission of gases. These requirements mentioned within this sustainability assignment hold the importance of environmental standards to be followed and depicted in the reporting of the companies.

The third instance that is understood and to be met by the use of business sustainability processes is the development of society. The business operations might be effective in meeting the needs of the different society and communities or may lead to disruption and destruction of such inhabitants. For example, the development of dams is considered economical and through renewable resource usage, it can be environmental. However, the area that is being used for the dam development might be habituating many villages and animals. Any faulty measures in the dam might lead to overflowing or breaking of the dam leading to the destruction of houses or farms nearby. The use of sustainable measures would ensure the alternative measures being taken by the companies to eradicate such issues and help in the development of the communities as well (Wagner and Seele, 2017).

Methodology
The readings used to prepare this sustainability assignmentsignifies that the GRI standards are typically based on the different types of reporting eyes that are to be taken into account by the company so that they are being able to identify and rectify the faults that are represented in their business operations. It also helps in the maintenance of transparency in the information of the company being passed out. As discussed in this sustainability assignmentthe GRI standard-based reporting helps in identifying the potential measures that have been taken and the contribution being conducted by the companies on the sustainable development system. The GRI standards define the concepts, the disclosures, which are to be taken from the G4 guidelines and implementation manual that has been issued by the Global Sustainability Standards Board (Gallego-Álvarez et al. 2018). The standards are currently grouped into six sections, modular sections that can be updated as needed. The first three standards are universal and used by all organisations for reporting termed as the GRI 101- Foundation, GRI 102- General Disclosure and GRI - 103 Management approach. GRI 101describes the ways of using and referring to the standards by the companies, GRI 102- General Disclosure helps in presenting the contextual information of the company practices and activities. In addition to this fact mentioned in the sustainability assignment, the GRI - 103 Management approach identifies the ways of managing the material topic that is to be present in the next three standards termed as the GRI 200 - Economy, GRI 300 - Environment and GRI 400 – Society (Beck et al. 2017).

Economic Sustainability
The research on sustainability assignmentillustrates that the economic sustainability based disclosures are based on the identification of the different activities, which are present in the GRI standards and the ones that have been used by the company Tramalway Industries. The standard would be effective in defining the economic performance of the company by majorly addressing the financial assistance that has been obtained from the government. It would also define the investment of the company based on infrastructure and the services supplied through such investments (Safari and Areeb, 2020). In addition, the company’s current expenses on the suppliers are identified at the same time.

Environmental Sustainability
Environmental sustainability in regards to the case scenario of sustainability assignment refers to the environmental activities that have been taken into account by the company in order to address the safeguard to the environment from the organisational processes being carried out in Tramalway Industries. The company would be addressing the management approaches used for the materials used for the manufacturing process in terms of the weight and the volume of the environmental raw material being used. There would be the identification of any use of recycled input materials which might be effective in reducing the amount of waste production though the successful mentioning of the recycling activities being taken into account in the company (Ordonez-Ponce and Khare, 2020).

Social Sustainability
It is stated in this sustainability assignmentthat the community and society based operations in the many would be addressed in this section which identified the CSR processing used by the company. There would be a productive analysis of the operations and suppliers demonstration of the incidents of child labour, the presence of employee training on the human right policies and the development of marketing communication processes without violating any societal norms (de Oliveira Bellini et al. 2019). The approaches of Tramalway Industries on the identified aspects would be demonstrated to gather knowledge of the possible risks or opportunities to be obtained by the company.

Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded from the above discussion on sustainability assignment that the company Tramalway Industries has been effective in increasing the overall purpose of development in terms of the standards that have been mediated in the GRI through the issues it had undergone in the previous year. The company had addressed a successful management approach that allowed it to resolve the issues identified in the form of fraud, spill, child labour and marketing communication. The strategies covered in this sustainability assignment had allowed the company to further manage their operations, increase the use of environmentally friendly and community-based porches to organisational development and growth.

Reference list
Beck, C., Dumay, J. and Frost, G., 2017. In pursuit of a ‘single source of truth’: from threatened legitimacy to integrated reporting. Sustainability assignmentJournal of Business Ethics, 141(1), pp.191-205. de Oliveira Bellini, E.C., Rodrigues, R.N. and Lagioia, U.C.T., 2019. Public Sector (Un) Sustainability: a study of GRI adherence and sustainability reporting disclosure standards in Public Institutions and State-Owned Companies of the Public Agency Sector. Cuadernos de Contabilidad, 20(49), pp.1-28.

Gallego-Álvarez, I., Lozano, M.B. and Rodríguez-Rosa, M., 2018. An analysis of the environmental information in international companies according to the new GRI standards. Journal of cleaner production, 182, pp.57-66. Michalczuk, G. and Konarzewska, U., 2018. GRI REPORTING FRAMEWORK AS A TOOL OF SOCIAL ACCOUNTING. Economic and Social Development: Book of Proceedings, pp.230-240.

Ordonez-Ponce, E. and Khare, A., 2020. GRI 300 as a measurement tool for the United Nations sustainable development goals: assessing the impact of car makers on sustainability. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, pp.1-29. Safari, M. and Areeb, A., 2020, March. A qualitative analysis of GRI principles for defining sustainability report quality: an Australian case from the preparers’ perspective. In Accounting Forum (pp. 1-32). Routledge.

Thomas, E.A., 2019. How Useful Is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Reporting Framework to Identify the Non-financial Value of Corporate Social Performance (CSP)?. In Responsible Business in Uncertain Times and for a Sustainable Future (pp. 37-87). Springer, Cham.

Wagner, R. and Seele, P., 2017. Uncommitted deliberation? Discussing regulatory gaps by comparing GRI 3.1 to GRI 4.0 in a political CSR perspective. Sustainability assignmentJournal of Business Ethics, 146(2), pp.333-351.