UN Global Compact - Greenstone submits Communication on Progress
This week, Greenstone submitted its annual Communication on Progress (COP) to UN Global Compact. Greenstone has been a participating member of the UN Global Compact since 2013 and each year publically submits a COP which outlines its commitment to the UNGC’s ten principles.
As a non-financial reporting software company, we use our solution to actively promote the UN Global Compact Principles as a standard for our clients. We are also dedicated to improving the transparency of corporate reporting in the four key areas – human rights, labour, environment and anti-bribery and corruption.
As part of our COP this year, in addition to reporting in these four key areas, we carried out a materiality assessment. With a wide range of sustainability topics organisations can report on, assessing which aspects are material enables Greenstone to focus our reporting. Both internal and external factors are used to determine ‘materiality’ involving organisational stakeholders such as customers or company investors.
The assessment of materiality yielded five areas which were most material to Greenstone and we believe should be reported against and linked to the UNGC Principles. This year, we also linked these five aspects to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and identified eight SDGs to align with.
Materiality is a key part of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting framework which is the recommended framework for reporting the organisational indicators and metrics for each principle in the COP. As a GRI GOLD Community member, we align Greenstone’s COP with the GRI G4 guidelines and disclosure aspects. In 2017-18 we will review this alignment against the new GRI Standards.
As part of our commitment to evaluating our environmental performance, we calculate our annual carbon footprint using the Environment module of our non-financial reporting software and include it in the COP. This is calculated across all relevant scopes and includes the carbon emissions associated with electricity use, business travel, commuter travel and waste.
Our recent COP illustrates our commitment to, and progress made on incorporating the UN Global Compact and its principles as part of our corporate strategy and the culture of our day-to-day operations. To view our Communication on Progress click here.
To find out more out the UN Global Compact visit this link.