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In This Issue
Editor's Note
BSR Debates Rules on Reporting
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's announcement last week of guidelines regarding corporate disclosure of climate-related risks brings to the fore a question that has generated growing interest in business and policy arenas: Should sustainability reporting be required?
This week, BSR's Dunstan Allison Hope and Blythe Chorn take opposite sides of the debate, offering their views on what mandatory reporting might look like, which issues would be measured, and whether it would raise the bar on sustainability practices or lower it—-creating a least common denominator approach to reporting.
Next, BSR's Beijing-based Pei Bin provides an analysis of a material issue to companies with operations in China: the rise of labor disputes.
Finally, we hear from Coca-Cola's head of energy and climate protection on the company's 10-year engagement with Greenpeace that culminated in Coca-Cola’s pledge to eliminate hydrofluorocarbons from its vending machines.
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In Depth
Mandatory Reporting: BSR Debates the Pros and Cons of Requiring Companies to Report on Sustainabilit
Interview with Dunstan Allison Hope, Managing Director, ICT Practice, and Blythe Chorn, Associate, Advisory Services, by Eva Dienel, Communications Manager, BSR
With more industry leaders beginning to ask whether sustainability reporting should be required, two BSR consultants debate what form it might take, whether mandatory reporting would impact innovation, and what would need to happen in order for such a system to work.
Read more →
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Spotlight
Chinese Labor Disputes on the Rise
By
Although Chinese workers have benefited from increased labor rights protection in recent years, the number of labor disputes reported in China has nearly doubled since 2007. This trend is a result of clearer and more comprehensive legal frameworks for labor protection, greater worker awareness of labor laws, and a lack of corporate investments in formal grievance mechanisms.
As labor disputes become more complex—a result of China's rapid social transition, urbanization, and industrialization in China—BSR recommends that companies invest in incentive programs that build worker loyalty, establish formal grievance systems, and support employee-assistance programs such as psychological counseling services. But business cannot do it alone; the government and labor unions also need to take a proactive role in communicating labor laws and policies.
Through our Labor Relations Practitioners Development Initiative, BSR has trained more than 1,000 labor-relations professionals on how to build strong labor-relations-management systems, and we have established a peer-education network where practitioners can share knowledge and best practices.
To learn more, contact Pei Bin.
On the Record
Greenpeace Collaboration Behind Coca-Cola’s HFC-Free Pledge
Just before Copenhagen, the Coca-Cola Company pledged to make 100 percent of its new vending machines hydrofluorocarbon-free (HFC-free) by 2015. The company noted that the announcement is a direct result of a decade’s work with Greenpeace, which first challenged Coca-Cola to eliminate HFCs in the equipment it supplied to the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Coca-Cola's head of energy and climate protection recently reflected on the evolution of the company's relationship with Greenpeace:
"Rather than letting it get ugly, we took a different tack. … We identified some space where there were mutual interests. We've been pretty successful at transforming that relationship from confrontation to collaboration."
—Bryan Jacob, Coca-Cola's head of energy and climate protection (speaking at the Value-Based Sustainability Forum, in the session "Who Makes the Rules: Lessons from Copenhagen," January 26, 2010, in San Jose, California)
Learn more about Coca-Cola's green initiatives at the Vancouver Olympics in this AdvertisingAge article, which includes comments from BSR's Research & Innovation Manager Ryan Shuchard.
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