Businesses Launch Global Sustainability Standard

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate release

GLOBAL STANDARD FOR SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING LAUNCHED

Palmerston North, New Zealand (Wednesday 19 October, 2016) – A new global standard for sustainability reporting is being launched this week by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

The launch of the new global standard is being celebrated at an event in Palmerston North in conjunction with Toyota New Zealand, who have been reporting on sustainability issues and using the GRI guidelines for over ten years. The event is co-hosted by the Manawatu Chamber of Commerce and the Palmerston North City Environment Trust and includes keynote presentations from Tristan Lavender, sustainability manager for Toyota NZ and Calum Revfem, director of sustainability reporting at Proxima (formerly Envirostate).

According to Calum Revfem from Proxima there are already more than 20 New Zealand businesses using GRI’s existing guidelines to publicly report on sustainability. These include household names like Toyota and Z Energy, as well as smaller less-well-known companies like Trevelyans and Jasmax. With the NZX recently updating its Corporate Governance Code to include sustainability reporting requirements for listed companies and specifically referencing use of the GRI guidelines, Mr.Revfem expects there will be much greater uptake of sustainability reporting in New Zealand. He added “Businesses are facing increasing demands from investors and key stakeholders for information about their environmental and social performance. The GRI standards provide a robust and internationally-recognised framework for businesses to transparently meet those demands.”

Eric Hespenheide, Interim Chief Executive of GRI, is pleased to have a healthy adoption rate of GRI’s reporting standards in New Zealand and to see the NZX specifying the use of GRI standards in their new code. He states that “one of the main reasons so many organisations work with GRI is our unique multi-stakeholder approach to standard-setting. In developing GRI Standards, we’ve actively sought input from all major stakeholder groups, including investors, civil society and labour organizations, scientists and academics and the business community. Engaging with a broad and inclusive set of stakeholders during the development of our standards helped us produce universally-applicable reporting guidance that allows businesses to extract the full value from sustainability reporting.”

The new standard builds on and replaces the GRI’s G4 Guidelines, the world’s most widely used framework by businesses reporting on environmental, social and economic performance.

The transition aims to make the GRI Standards more accessible for reporting organisations and policy-makers, and so to encourage more consistent, higher quality sustainability reporting, focused on material issues.

For further information visit: www.globalreporting.org

ENDS

About Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is an international, independent organization that helps businesses, governments and other organizations understand and communicate the impact of business on critical sustainability issues such as climate change, human rights, corruption and many others. GRI produces the world's most trusted and widely used standards for sustainability reporting, theGRI Guidelines, which enable organizations to measure and understand their most critical impacts on the environment, society and the economy. Thousands of reporters in over 90 countries use GRI's Standards for their reporting.

About Proxima

Proxima is a leading sustainability strategy and reporting consultancy.

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