|
Corporate Responsibility/Sustainability: SASB Reporting Standards
Teresa Sabol Spezio, Ph.D., P.E. and STC Program Director, Los Angeles, CA
Recognizing that both government and consumers care about corporate decisions and policies outside the financial sphere, many corporations have developed sustainability/corporate responsibility standards. However, although many large corporations have robust sustainability programs, many of their programs lack any quantitative metrics for progress. In addition, given the plethora of sustainability categories, the measures and terms used in one corporation often differ from those used in other corporations. Individual companies often find it a struggle to complete the non-financial disclosure reports required by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). To solve these problems, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) attempts to create a template for sustainability reporting.
The brainchild of a few Harvard professors and others, SASB has the backing of many financial heavyweights (Michael Bloomberg is the SASB's chair). SASB creates reporting standards using existing sustainability information developed by the industries and requesting industry representatives to review and comment prior to publication. SASB's hope is that these standards will assist industries with their SEC reporting and will provide investors with a way to compare corporations in a particular sector with each other for investment purposes. With this in the mind, the standards set a minimum for disclosure but they do concentrate on creating real numerical metrics for reporting.
SASB plans to create standards for all industry sectors with the hope that the SEC will approve these sector standards for compliance with SEC disclosure requirements. Previously, SASB developed standards for sustainability reporting for the following industry sectors:
- Finance
- Health Care
- Non-Renewable Resources
- Technology and Communication
SASB's latest set of standards for the transportation sector provides guidance for SEC Form 10-K or 20-F annual filings. In addition, SASB plans on creating standards for the services, resource transformation, consumption, renewable resources & alternative energy, and infrastructure sectors over the next few years.
As an example of SASB standards, the most recent standards addressed the following topics for auto part suppliers (that is, companies that manufacture and assemble the vehicle parts and accessories for the major car makers):
- Energy Management
- Waste Management
- Product Safety (number of recalls)
- Life Cycle Management (recyclable/reusable products)
- Competitive Behavior (Anti-Competitive fines and settlements)
- Material Sourcing (Conflict Mineral Use)
Although these topics do not begin to approach the universe of sustainability topics, objectives and metrics, the set of numerical metrics for each one provides a method to determine a corporation's progress in sustainability measures and to compare it with other corporations. In addition, these standards give large and small corporations a template for sustainability/corporate responsibility metric creation to use for SEC disclosure requirements.
To receive a copy of SASB standards for your industry sector or get involved in developing a specific industry sector, go to SASB's webpage (http://www.sasb.org). In addition, STC is happy to assist in developing and recording your organization's sustainability metrics or meeting your other sustainability objectives.
Teresa Sabol Spezio, Ph.D., P.E. and STC Program Director Teresa has over 25 years of experience in environmental compliance and auditing activities. As a consultant, she specializes in minimizing environmental exposure through discharges into air, water and land and developing plans and programs to prevent spills and accidents. She has worked with industrial clients in developing and implementing ISO 14001 EMS programs and achieving certification as required. She has performed environmental compliance and management systems audits in over twenty states and three Canadian provinces. She also is experienced at sustainability program implementation and development, including baseline metrics and goal setting, employee training, development of best practices, and management of construction activities to ensure that projects met LEED standards.
For more information about these SASB standards and STC's Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability services, contact Teresa at (626) 319-5622 or tspezio@stcenv.com. |
