Sustainability Reporting Across Sectors

This assignment delves into the realm of sustainability reporting by analyzing case studies from diverse sectors. It includes a critical examination of financial and sustainability reporting in Italy, pioneering sustainability efforts in higher education, corporate sustainability at project levels, and the role of sustainability ratings in organizational legitimacy. The analysis also extends to mining practices, employee perceptions of corporate sustainability, biodiversity conservation actions by corporations, and the integration of Sustainable Development Goals into university curricula. Finally, it explores the application of GHG reporting for impression management and provides insights into the adoption of sustainable business models by S&P 500 firms.

CONTEMPORARY ISSUES IN
ACCOUNTING

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Focus of the current assignment is on evaluating the performance by using sustainable
reporting measures. Sustainable reporting focuses on three aspects mainly social, economical
and environmental. Rio Tinto has been selected for this report in determining their actual
condition. Current sustainable reporting of Rio Tinto emphasises on environmental and social
will help in boosting the economical or financial performance of the firm.
2

TABLE OF CONTENTS
S

TABLE OF FIGURE
Figure 1 Market areas...............................................................................................................2
Figure 2 Business Cycle.............................................................................................................2
Figure 3 Trends in ASX200 reporting........................................................................................4
Figure 4 Sustainable development goals...................................................................................5
4

INTRODUCTION
Sustainability reporting is a tool to aware all the companies operating their business in
Australia about the nature as this will lead them to severe problems in the future in terms of
uncertain government regulations and penalty. Rio Tinto has been selected for this reporting
in evaluating the reporting status of an entity. Current report illustrates the current state of the
sustainability along with the implications of the same on all the stakeholders.
Background of company
Rio Tinto is an Australian based transnational firm deals in metals and mining which
is ranked as world’s largest firm in an Australia. This enterprise is a collaboration of both the
economies of Australia and British to mark their presence on the entire world. This firm
comes into existence in the year 1873 in two headquarters of two different locations such as
London in the United Kingdom and Melbourne in Australia (Rio Tinto, 2017). The business
growth of this entity develops through various mergers and acquisition of several businesses
who sell different products including iron ore, copper, coal, aluminium, uranium, and
diamonds. A primary focus of this entity lies in the extraction of minerals and refining of
business operation.
Rio Tinto operates their business in major parts of the world such as Australia and
Canada to run their mining business operating smoothly. This firm is dual listed company
listed on two stock exchanges of their headquarter countries. Rio Tinto Group is listed on
London Stock exchange and Australian stock exchange to avail the higher benefits of the
overall market volatility in the external world. Stock exchange components in which this
group involves is FTSE 100 index under London stock exchange and S&P and ASX 200
index under Australian stock exchange. These two exchanges are to rated exchange board
that helps in creating positive fluctuations in the business entity
1

Figure 1 Market areas
The aim of Rio Tinto is to produce minerals for increasing human progress as without
this aim the business operation of the firm goes in vain. Rio Tinto group are the pioneers of
mining and metal as their motive is to offer quality oriented services to all its customers. Rio
Tinto has a large market as their business operates in 35 countries by covering six continents
in offering a variety of services along with high quality of output. The motive of this
company is to create a large number of loyal customers for the services they offer to them.
Figure 2 Business Cycle
This enterprise is a pioneer of not only the mines and minerals production but also introduces
technological innovations in the market to get the sustainable competitive advantage as
compared to their rivals. They also emphasize on protecting the atmosphere as their future
programme is to reduce the carbon emissions by following eco-friendly business operations
2

which will create balance for both presents as well as for the future generations. This
company offers employee safety by adopting various safety measures as the business
operations are prone to severe risks.
Sustainability reporting
It is a social obligation under which an individual or group of the individual need to
consider the needs of the future generations (Ceulemans, Stough and Lambrechts, 2018).
Australian Council of sustainability reporting committee frames various rules and regulations
to control the actions of the business in safeguarding the environment. As per the new report
of the corporate sustainability reporting in Australia, various risks come in the bigger picture
are economic, environmental, social and governance risks which need to be resolved at the
initial stage (Talbot, D. and Boiral, 2018). All these risks play an integral role in spoiling the
nature as business corporations are increasing industrial wastes, pollution, excessively using
natural resources for the production of artificial and manmade resources. These practices
adopted by various firms show their carefree attitude and negligence towards the environment
as they are compromising with the needs of all the future generations.
Corporate sustainability reporting is governed by the Australian Council of
Superannuation Investors in the year 2001 to offer strong advice in protecting the nature of
all the external forces. This committee offers three-dimensional protections in resolving three
kinds of issues such as environmental, social and governmental; all these issues are inter-
related to each other as ignorance to one issue will lead to another problem (Lodhia, 2018).
For instance, increasing global warming is an environmental issue which leads to pollution
in the environment. This spreads diseases in the environment is a social issue and this issue
will further lead to a governmental problem when excessive pollution becomes severe that
increases deaths of humans by inhaling toxic air.
This council has 37 Australian and international business owners who collectively
handle the assets worth of $1.5 trillion (Sassen and Azizi, 2018). Role of this commission is
to identify the internal as well as the external impact on the business in providing various
investment opportunities to maximize the overall returns. Members of this committee
share their experience with each other in building a strong association which helps in
resolving all the risks incurred in the external environment.
3

Figure 3 Trends in ASX200 reporting
The above line chart shows the status of the sustainable reporting of Australian
exchange companies listed under ASX200 index. Three parameters of this line chart are no
reporting, detailed reporting and moderate reporting on the y-axis and no. of companies
shown on the x-axis (Corbett, Webster and Jenkin, 2018). This chart shows reporting status
of companies from 2008 to 2016. Count of companies in reporting status got decreases from
31 in 2008 to 16 in 2016 shows the market awareness of the firm who shows interest
towards sustainability reporting with the passage of time. Detailed reporting done by 39
number of companies in [1] the year 2008 and 101 in 2016 signifies an improvement in the
reporting status of the firm as they feel their social obligation towards the society (Reale,
Magro and Ribas, 2018). Moderate and basic reporting graph is declining from 130 in initial
period to 83 in 2016 is not good as this state depict the confusion state of companies who
think basic reporting is not essential for their firm.
4

Sustainability report of company
Figure 4 Sustainable development goals
These are standard sustainable development goals framed by the sustainable reporting
council in Australia which needs to comply with all the businesses operate in Australia. No
poverty, zero hunger, good health, equal education and gender equality belongs to social
obligation (Agostini and Costa, 2018). Clean water, clean energy belongs to environmental
obligation. Work and economic growth, industrial infrastructure, sustainable cities and rests
other belongs to other obligation which is required to be adopted by an entity in order to
provide healthy lifestyle to all the society members of Australia (Pintão, Chaves and Branco,
2018).
Sustainable reporting matter a lot for Rio Tinto as they utilize aluminum in manufacturing
lighter vehicles for its customers as this is recyclable and highly durable (Willats, Erlandsson,
Molthan-Hill, Dharmasasmita and Simmons, 2018). By using eco- friendly business practices
they contribute to three elements such as environmental by saving its resources, offering
lighter vehicles to its users is one of the social obligations and lastly, low cost products are
one of the economic objectives. In this way, aluminum contributes to building the sustainable
society by reducing wastes in the manufacturing.
This group also lays emphasis on reducing carbon emissions by producing metals as
generally the production of metal generates higher carbon emission (Reynolds, Blackmore,
Ison Shah and Wedlock, 2018). Decreasing the levels of carbon is taken as one of the
challenges by the firm in setting up a large base of loyal customers. Challenge for the firm is
to utilize cent percent electricity used in the metal smelting process for metal production in
5

the form of renewable resources. Electricity can produce using biogas in which all wet and
bio-degradable waste is converted into electricity to save the money as well as environmental
resources.
Nowadays, electricity becomes the depletion resource due to excessively used by businesses
in the manufacturing process (Gauthier and Wooldridge, 2018). Results of this project will
amaze rivals who produce the similar products that this project manages to reduce 20% of
carbon emissions, 65% carbon footprint and 39% reduction in greenhouse gas released during
the manufacturing of the metals and minerals.
Implications on various stakeholders
Rio Tinto has a large set of stakeholders such as employees, shareholders, investors,
society, and government. For producing metals and minerals the group is required to take
permission from the society members and government in using the environmental resources
within the standard limits (Ritala and et. al., 2018). The act of industry may affect the local
residents residing near the industries as the waste of the industry is disposed to the rivers and
roads which create difficulties for them in living their life freely. Participation of the society
is essential to increase the social image of the firm in front of all the internal as well as
external users.
RECOMMENDATION
RIO Tinto is recommended to create a special programme for their stakeholders in
order to provide all the services such as food, shelter, and cloth to all their employees at the
initial stage to boost their performance. By doing, this government will support the firm in
financial terms in fulfilling all their dreams.
CONCLUSION
It can summarize from the above report that sustainable reporting in Australia
is increasing from one period to another due to higher market awareness. Current sustainable
reporting of Rio Tinto emphasizes on environmental and social will help in boosting the
economic or financial performance of the firm.
6

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Agostini, M. and Costa, E., 2018. Financial and Sustainability Reporting: An Empirical
Investigation of Their Relationship in the Italian Context. In Sustainability and Social
Responsibility: Regulation and Reporting (pp. 411-441). Springer, Singapore.
Ceulemans, K., Stough, T. and Lambrechts, W., 2018. Pioneering in sustainability reporting
in higher education: Experiences of a Belgian business faculty. In Handbook of Sustainability
Science and Research (pp. 211-231). Springer, Cham.
Corbett, J., Webster, J. and Jenkin, T. A., 2018. Unmasking corporate sustainability at the
project level: exploring the influence of institutional logics and individual agency. Journal of
Business Ethics. 147(2). pp.261-286.
Gauthier, J. and Wooldridge, B., 2018. Sustainability Ratings and Organizational Legitimacy:
The Role of Compensating Tactics. In Sustainability and Social Responsibility: Regulation
and Reporting (pp. 141-157). Springer, Singapore.
Lodhia, S. K., 2018. 1 Mining and sustainable development. Mining and Sustainable
Development: Current Issues.
Pintão, S., Chaves, C. and Branco, M. C., 2018. Employees’ recognition of corporate
sustainability: a case study. Corporate Governance: The International Journal of Business in
Society.
Reale, R., Magro, T. C. and Ribas, L. C., 2018. Measurement and analyses of biodiversity
conservation actions of corporations listed in the Brazilian stock exchange's corporate
sustainability index. Journal of Cleaner Production. 170. pp.14-24.
Reynolds, M., Blackmore, C., Ison, R., Shah, R. and Wedlock, E., 2018. The role of systems
thinking in the practice of implementing sustainable development goals. In Handbook of
Sustainability Science and Research (pp. 677-698). Springer, Cham.
Ritala, P., and et.al., 2018. Sustainable business model adoption among S&P 500 firms: A
longitudinal content analysis study. Journal of Cleaner Production. 170. pp.216-226.
Sassen, R. and Azizi, L., 2018. Assessing sustainability reports of US
universities. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education.
7

Talbot, D. and Boiral, O., 2018. GHG reporting and impression management: An assessment
of sustainability reports from the energy sector. Journal of Business Ethics. 147(2). pp.367-
383.
Willats, J., Erlandsson, L., Molthan-Hill, P., Dharmasasmita, A. and Simmons, E., 2018. A
University Wide Approach to Embedding the Sustainable Development Goals in the
Curriculum—A Case Study from the Nottingham Trent University’s Green Academy.
In Implementing Sustainability in the Curriculum of Universities (pp. 63-78). Springer,
Cham.
Online
Rio Tinto, 2017. Available through: <http://www.riotinto.com/aboutus/about-rio-tinto-
5004.aspx> [Accessed on 26th January 2018].
8