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New guidance to help businesses report on sustainability

The Environment Minister Lord Taylor of Holbeach has outlined plans to make it easier for businesses to demonstrate their sustainability performance to the public and investors.

Under the new guidelines, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will provide information on how firms can measure and report on their impact on wildlife and natural services such as clean air, clean water, food, timber, flood protection and welfare benefits.

Lord Taylor believes that the revised information will help firms to understand that by improving sustainability is good for the environment as well as their bottom line.

He said: “This new guidance is another step towards our aim of corporate sustainability reporting becoming normal business practice by making it as simple as possible for companies to show their environmental impact.”

Businesses will be able to use the guidance to decipher where they can make savings in their business, and will help to meet interest from investors in environmental information which is relevant to investment decisions.

This announcement will built on the Rio+20 agreement where British firms and Government were able to secure international support to encourage businesses to include sustainability in their annual reporting.

The Minister also announced further details from Rio+20 which require all quoted companies to report on greenhouse gas emissions.

Businesses have been issues with a draft of the regulation which will be required of them from April 2013.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .