Disclosing and Reporting Environmental Sustainability of Supply Chains

Abstract

Environmental disclosure and reporting can be broadly defined as the various methods that businesses use to communicate their environmental impacts, responsibilities, and mitigation activities to stakeholders. The decision of what and when to disclose is specific to each setting; companies make disclosure decisions while considering internal objectives, external pressure, and regulatory requirements. The motivations that drive reporting are often regulatory compliance, risk mitigation, and brand positioning. Reporting companies disclose environmental information in several different ways: by publishing quantitative metrics, by comparing performance with set targets, through third-party verification, and by means of environmental cost accounting. Once a company has assessed its impacts, corporate decision makers can then choose to report solely through their individual reports or to disclose their impacts through a variety of platforms. In reporting, most companies only account for their own operations, not for the entire supply chain. Many critics of standard reporting suggest that assessments scoped at the company level misses far too much and does not account for the supply chain at all. This chapter reviews the current status of business environmental disclosure and reporting for supply chains, ongoing challenges, and concludes with the future of reporting.