A Critical Review Of Heathrow Airport’s Sustainability Reporting

Running head: A CRITICAL REVIEW OF HEATHROW AIRPORT’S SUSTAINABILITY
REPORTING
A Critical Review of Heathrow Airport’s Sustainability Reporting
Student’s name
University
Author’s note

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF HEATHROW AIRPORT’S SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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Executive summary
Non-financial reporting such as CSR and sustainability reporting is a relatively new trend
in the corporate sector across the world. The trend of corporate sustainability reporting was
initiated around the 1980s with the practice of environmental reporting. The initiative was
primarily taken up by large scale chemical companies to improve their brand image pertaining to
pollution issues. Further, a few small and medium scale enterprises carried on with the
environmental reporting, who were seriously engaged and committed to advanced environment
management systems. However, the tobacco industry was much more involved in the reporting
process among the entire corporate sector in an attempt to attract more investors in the wake of
ethical investigation. Gradually with the changing time, all sorts of corporate enterprises, both
MNCs and SMEs started to take part in voluntary disclosure of their non-financial performances.
Such reports encompass heir CSR activities, sustainability concerns and practices, as well as
ESG goals. However, often corporates face criticism regarding their disclosure practices, which
claim that their reports lack substantive data. Also, some receive the allegation that their
sustainability report is more of a glossy marketing brochure, hiding the flaws in sustainability
performance. Therefore, it is commonly understood that an acceptable sustainability report has to
follow certain viable guidelines. In the present report, a case study of Heathrow Airport’s
sustainability report has been taken up to review whether it qualifies as an acceptable report or
not.

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF HEATHROW AIRPORT’S SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Brief Overview of Heathrow Airport..............................................................................................4
Sustainability Concerns at Heathrow Airport..................................................................................5
Heathrow Sustainability Reporting 2018.........................................................................................7
Key Stakeholders.........................................................................................................................7
Organizational values..................................................................................................................7
Sustainability Strategy: Heathrow 2.0.........................................................................................8
A great place to work...............................................................................................................8
A great place to live.................................................................................................................9
A thriving sustainable economy..............................................................................................9
A world worth travelling.......................................................................................................10
Progress Update for 2018..........................................................................................................11
Compliance to GRI Universal Standards.......................................................................................11
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................13
References......................................................................................................................................14

A CRITICAL REVIEW OF HEATHROW AIRPORT’S SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING
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Introduction
Sustainability reporting is a practice that organizations adopt to publish or disclose their
information on the social and environmental performance, along with their governance related
procedure (ESG goals) to manage the sustainable practices and policies. This practice of
sustainability reporting does not include report generation from the collected data, rather it
involves their process of improving and internalizing the organization’s commitment to
sustainable development, so as to demonstrate the practice to the both the external and internal
stakeholder (Stacchezzini et al. 2016)
A proper form of CSR and sustainability reporting, which is recognized and popularized
in the recent times, has only emerged in the last twenty years (Bristow 2018). And more and
more corporate organizations are joining the trend over the time. Although different enterprises
have different intentions and techniques to publish their non-financial information such as CSR
and sustainability management policies, the core intention can be described behind the practice is
to maintain transparency and accountability, engaging stakeholders (Ehnert et al. 2016)
The Benefit of sustainability reporting nonetheless includes an improved corporate
reputation that in turn help build credibility, gaining shareholders’ trust, building consumers’
confidence, increase innovation and also, improve risk management systems. To achieve these
goals, an organization has to follow certain reliable and acceptable criteria and disclose their
information accordingly (De Villiers, Rouse and Kerr 2016).
There is no single standard to construct an accurate sustainability report. However, there
are certain global organizations and standards that organizations can adopt to measure and