The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) produces globally recognized sustainability reporting frameworks and offers tools to help organizations set goals, measure progress, and manage sustainability performance. Read this article that gives an overview of the GRI and its reporting guidelines.

How does an organization begin to approach measuring sustainability improvements? How can these be compared to other organizations and communicated with transparency and trust to stakeholders?

Reporting guidelines

Standards for guidelines

The GRI framework aims to enable third parties to assess environmental impact from the activities of the company and its supply chain. The standardized reporting guidelines concerning the environment are contained within the GRI Indicator Protocol Set. The performance indicators (PI) includes criteria on energy, biodiversity, and emissions. There are 30 environmental indicators ranging from EN1 (materials used by weight) to EN30 (total environmental expenditures by type of investment).

The 3.1 guideline was updated by the materiality-based 4.0 guideline in 2014, resulting in some commentary regarding comparability.