Sustainability in Economics - PDF

SUSTAINABILITY
ASSESSMENT

INTRODUCTION
For every company, it is crucial to ensure that their activities and operations are
sustainable in nature and comply with the legal regulations and compliances that have been
formulated. In this report, a sustainability assessment report has been prepared on an Australian
company, Timberwell Constructions. This report will understand and analyse various standards
that have been formulated by GRI and evaluate that how many of them and upto what extent
these have been followed by the Timberwell Company (Initiative, 2016). These standards are
related to the economic, environmental and social sustainability that companies operating in
Australia are required to comply. In this report, it will be identified that how many of these
standards have been complied with by the construction company and in which standards the
company has defaulted on the basis of a series of complaint filed by an employee of the company
Dennis has been evaluated.
MAIN BODY
A. Economic Sustainability
i) Disclosure 201-2 Financial Implications and other risks and opportunities due to climate
change.
As per this disclosure of GRI, it is essential for the companies to keep in mind the impact
of the environmental activities that are being undertaken. The various risks and opportunities that
the intended actions hold and the financial implications of such actions must be kept in
accounted and properly evaluated before taking the action. In the present case, Timberland
Company has identified the effect of warming up of climate that can lead to increased incidents
of bushfires in some specific areas (Tan, George and Comino, 2015). The company is closely
associated with the state council i..e Stanwell Council under the Local Environment Plan under
which particular areas will be marked as bushfire prone and special measures would be taken to
rezone these areas which will increase the security and safety standards. It has increased the
additional cost of the company by $4 million due to formulation of new regulations and the
company is trying to collaborate with the state council by engaging an external firm working
with the special purpose of town planning (Wolfram, Wiedmann and Diesendorf, 2016). This is
expected to reduce the cost on an overall basis but it has also created an additional cost of
$50000 which is to be paid to the external company which has been hired for planning.

ii) Disclosure 205-3 Confirmed Incidents of Corruption and action taken.
There are various sections of this disclosure formulated under GRI which states that a
company involved in corruption is required to submit the total number of incidents when the
company was involved in corruption and the number of cases under which guilty employees
were removed or some legal action was taken for them, number of cases when contracts were
cancelled with the external parties who were found guilty of corruption and lastly number of
public cases that were filed against the company and the outcomes (Xia, Chen, Skitmore, Zuo
and Li, 2015). Dennis, the employee filed a complaint against the Timebrwell company stating
that 5 of the company’s employees and 2 business partners who were involved in the corruption
since they had given bribe to the council officers so that they would fasten the process of getting
approval regarding the development application of the company. However, the management of
the company took appropriate action by firing all the five employees that were involved in the
corruption and further terminating the partnership contracts that the company had with those two
external parties, thus taking appropriate actions (Gallego-Álvarez, Lozano and Rodríguez-Rosa,
2018).
iii) Disclosure 206-1 Legal Actions for anti-competitive behaviour, anti-trust, and monopoly
practices.
Under this disclosure, GRI has stated that the company shall submit information
regarding the total number of legal cases that are pending towards Timberwell company
regarding behaviour, trust or monopoly practices of the company and also the outcomes of any
legal actions if taken and the decision and judgements that were made (GRI Standards, 2017). As
per the complaint filed by Dennis, the company was accused of threatening the suppliers and
contractors of the comp-any that if they formulate any kind of working contracts or relationships
with the emerging competitor of the company, they would sever or substantially reduce the
Timberwell Company’s contracts with such suppliers. Company was charged with violating the
GRI standards and preventing the entry of rival company in the same market (Berinde and
Andreescu, 2015). Therefore, a case has been filed by Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC), in the federal court which is to be heard in four months and subsequent
action be taken.

B. Environmental Sustainability
i) Disclosure 302-1 Energy Consumption within the organization.
This GRI Standard states that company shall report the total quantity of non-renewable
resources consumption whether in joules or its multiples and also specify the multiple types of
fuel used. In this regard, Timberwell Company released a PR statement stating that the company
is extremely energy efficient organization and they even presented a table which clearly
segregated their consumption of fuel from different i.e. renewable as well as non-renewable
sources which was calculated as per the tools and procedures determined by Australian
Department of Industry and Science (Wójcik-Jurkiewicz and Sadowska, 2018). As per their data
their fuel consumption from non-renewable resources was 1 Gigajoule however, their
consumption from renewable sources was 0.5 Gigajoules which shows that they are maximising
their consumption of energy from renewable sources which is a big step toward conservation of
environment. Further, they even stated that within upcoming three years, they would further
increase the fuel consumption from renewable source by 50% i.e. making it 1 Gigajoule. This
shows that company is utilising the energy that they require in an extremely efficient manner
(Horner and Wilmshurst, 2016).
ii) Disclosure 304- 2 Significant impact of activities, products and services on biodiversity
Biodiversity is defined as the different mix of life present on earth. This principle states
that all the activities performed by Timberwell construction have a great impact on the
biodiversity of the areas nearby (Sala, Ciuffo and Nijkamp, 2015). It is mainly because of the
reason that the company builds apartments and complexes which affects the people living
nearby. This is evident by the provided case study of Timberwell construction is alleged to use
anti- competitive strategies which involve negative use of the strong market share and other
business operations. This shows the fact that whatever business works whether good or bad has
impact over the surrounding of the workplace. Like for instance if the company does not use
good quality of raw materials then it will not make good building and this will impact the
residents living within the building. And ultimately this will result in decrease in the goodwill of
the company. By following this principle, the company follows the thing that the construction of
the building does not cause any problem for the surrounding environment, less pollution,
development of environment and many more other factors.

iii) Disclosure 307- 1 Non- compliance with environmental laws and regulations
This standard consists to be a part of reporting standard relating to GRI sustainability
which are made for the organization to outline the impact of the environment on the
sustainability of the work. This principle states that if Timberwell does not follow the laws and
rules related with the environment then they have to pay for some significant penalties and fines
and other way of punishment from the government of country. This is done because of the reason
that if there will be more of fines and penalties then the company will think before it works
against the environment and also to avoid the penalties and fines it will work in direction of
protecting and safeguarding the environment.
Environmental issues can be like emissions of harmful gases, effluents, waste materials
and other harmful discharges within the environment. Also, the company is fined with $200000
for 0.45 hectares clearance of the community which is endangered in the nearby grasslands at the
coastal area (Maas, Schaltegger and Crutzen, 2016). For reducing these harmful impacts on the
environment, the company can take some positive measures to protect the environment from
these outflows. These measures can be like planting of more trees in nearby areas, voluntarily
support in the environmental protection acts and surveys, abiding by all the laws relating to the
environment protection. Another thing which Timberwell can use is to provide for incentives and
bonus to those employees who supports in the direction of environmental protection so that they
are more encouraged to work in environmental protection (Yigitcanlar, Dur and Dizdaroglu,
2015). Also, now the company is working with Stanwell council and complying with the thought
changes which are made in the local environmental plan made by both Stanwell and Timberwell
C) Social sustainability
i) Disclosure 401- 1 New employee hires and employee turnover
It is a principle which guides employees within the business from their arrival till their
turnover from the organization. This principle is necessary for Timberwell to follow because
there is high employee turnover within the company. It is mainly because of the reason that
because of high competition 17 employees have left and joined the competitors or have started
their own. Therefore, it is necessary for the to hire more workers and they recruited new
employees which are around 12 in number in the reporting period (Kamali, Hewage and Milani,
2018). Also, a worker of business gave resignation from its post in the business due to the reason
that of workplace harassment and claimed at Fair Work Commission and there he alleged that he

was discriminated against his co- worker on basis of age. Therefore, the claim was upheld and
the company had to pay $4400 as compensation.
Therefore, with all these allegations the goodwill and the market value of the company
decreased and this led to decrease in work of the company. Now for overcoming this problem the
company first has to make changes in the policies of the company which it has for the employees
and then it must hire new employees which are more competent and capable of working. Also,
because of these allegations the goodwill has decreased and for this the company has started for a
public relation campaign which clears the negative publicity which was done because of all the
allegations.
ii) Disclosure 406- 1 Incidents of discrimination and corrective actions taken
This principle states there must not be any type of discrimination within the company.
But this is not in the case study of Timberwell as an worker named Dennis McCabe resigned
from the company stating that there has been discrimination taken place with him on basis of age
(Fritz, Schöggl and Baumgartner, 2017). This was mainly because of the reason that Dennis was
the single employees who was older above age of 50 so he was targeted and humiliated. But the
employee lodged a suit against the business under provision of Fair Work Commission. As a
result of this complaint business has to pay a compensation amount of $4400 to the workers for
all the humiliations which it faced in the company.
iii) Disclosure 413- 1 Operations with local community engagement, impact assessment and
development programs
This is yet another standard in the report relating for the assessment sustainability for
Timberwell constructions. The company works in the environment where it needs to pay focus
on the local community as well understand the impact which the working and development
programs have on the community. This standard asks company to report the percentage of
operations which the company has implemented with the local community and what are the
social impact of these operations on the society. The company must disclose the outcomes
relating to environmental and social impact of the assessment over the local communities. This
engagement with the community is very necessary because of the reason that the business exist
in the competitive world and it has to make sure that all the local communities have cordial
relations with the Timberwell (GRI 413: Local communities 2016, 2018). It is majorly because of

the reason that to face the competition the good relation with local communities will give a
competitive advantage to the company.
CONCLUSION
From the analysis and research conducted in this report, it can be adequately concluded
that while in some aspects, the company is following the GRI standards, there are some scenarios
under which the company has heavily defaulted. While reporting the economic sustainability
standards, it was found that the company has been involved ion corruptive and anti-competitive
actions but has worked effectively towards conserving the environment by working on Bushfire
prone areas. Further, as per environmental sustainability, the energy consumption is extremely
efficient but its operations are impacting he biodiversity. Lastly, social sustainability was studied
and it was found that although there have been some of the dissatisfied personnel employed in
the company and it needs to refurbish the existing culture of the company, they have worked
effectively towards improvement of the society in which they operate.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
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Sala, S., Ciuffo, B. and Nijkamp, P., 2015. A systemic framework for sustainability
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Yigitcanlar, T., Dur, F. and Dizdaroglu, D., 2015. Towards prosperous sustainable cities: A
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Online
GRI Standards. 2017. [Online]. Available through: <
https://standards.sinzer.org/gri/disclosure/302-1>
GRI 413: Local communities 2016. 2018. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.globalreporting.org/standards/media/1028/gri-413-local-communities-
2016.pdf>
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