Saturday, December 12, 2009

The Global Reporting Inititative


TriLibrium, the firm that I founded, released its first sustainability report yesterday. We used the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework to report on our economic, environmental, and social performance. Follow this link to download a PDF of our report.

Sustainability reports based on the GRI framework allow an organization to benchmark their performance with respect to laws, norms, codes, performance standards and voluntary initiatives. It also allows a company to demonstrate commitment to sustainable development and, to compare organizational performance over time.

The GRI is a standardized approach that can be used by any size organization regardless of geographic location. Has your company prepared such a report? If so, what would it say?

If your organization is promoting its "greenness", it ought to complete or be planning to complete a Sustainability Report as well as a greenhouse gas inventory. In my opinion, a company must do these things or it risks being labeled a greenwasher and with it, its reputation and brand value.

3 comments:

Adam said...

How do you all deal with the paperwork associated with being a CPA firm? Have you gone digital as much as possible to minimize paper use? Did you all look @ using USB to give clients finished products? I commend what you are doing and am trying to head in the right direction myself on the east coast.

Brian C. Setzler, CPA said...

Adam,

Thanks for your inquiry. Yes, we are pretty much paperless here at TriLibrium. I think we used three reams of paper during our first year.

All our clients are offered a paper tax return if they'd like a physical copy. Most don't as they appreciate the commitment to reducing waste.

For their future needs, besides having a copy of their return on our computers and internal systems, we also store a copy on our web portal, where every client has their own encrypted, accessible and secure storage space.

Hope that helps. The USB idea is something we thought of but there are problems with that as well -- it is easy to lose, not generally very secure, and may have a larger footprint than paper.

Adam said...

Thanks for the response. The other thing I am struggling with is signatures. I need to eliminate the printing step in the signature process. Have you all found a way around that with a good electronic signature tool?