Study of Environmental Reporting Practices in Selected Sugar Companies in India

Abstract

In today’s era, we see that our climate is changing, maybe due to various factors like ecological imbalance, environmental pollution and many more, which has given thought of sustainability in business. As a result, many companies have started with sustainability concept. Not only philosophy but performance as well as reporting & disclosure are important for the same and to increase reputation in the market. Corporate sustainability reporting is an emerging discipline, which includes much information to be disclosed by companies. This paper is trying to evaluate and compare the scope and quality of the current practice in sustainability reporting in sugar companies with the main objective to leverage power of information. For the evaluation, a set of different parameters had been developed and were embedded into a scoring system. There are mainly five broad categories namely, Management Approach & Reliability, Reporting Guidelines, Environmental, Social, Governance, which can be combined and named as MRESG. Looking to the conclusion, the company which has scored highest is the best company not only in sustainability reporting but also for investment from investor’s point of view.

The increasing attention of companies to sustainability reporting globally has been reported . Companies need appropriate systems to measure and control their own behavior in order to assess whether they are responding to stakeholder concerns in an effective way and to communicate the results achieved.

 Keywords: Sustainability reporting, Management Approach & reliability, reporting guidelines, Environmental, social, Governance