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Important Message:
Complete lifecycle reporting
Our recent experience has uncovered a very important issue on sustainability reporting, which I need to communicate with you. While many thousands of companies have made a great start publishing on Ecodesk, the most truly innovative organisations have begun to undertake a complete lifecycle approach incorporating manufacture, supply chain and even product use and end of life. They are easy to spot, because the carbon emissions data is often substantially greater than the average.
This very important position is often misinterpreted. Big carbon numbers and upward trends reflect an increased knowledge and transparency, and a willingness to deal with responsibility, not a tendency towards profligacy and waste. The truth is, we have discovered in these early stages, that public perception favours comprehensive reporting, not hiding data or competitive environmentalism.
Be bold, think big
So the message is obvious. We encourage bold, innovative organisations to lead from the front, and break with the dangerous path of reporting as little as possible to look good in tables and rankings. It might seem like a paradox, but big, public, transparent data and information is a lot less risky than minimising numbers, and keeping information under wraps.
The age old mantra holds true, ‘what gets measured, gets managed’. The greater the number of suppliers, stakeholders and customers who are included in a process incorporating carbon, energy, waste and water use, the greater our opportunity in managing environmental stewardship on a global level, and making it stick. See our help box to the right of this message for more tips to interpret Ecodesk profiles.
Have fun, be bold, and enjoy the site.
Founder and CEO, Ecodesk
MORE ABOUT COMPLETE REPORTING
To help you interpret Ecodesk data and distinguish full from partial reporting we have added a few devices to help:
Full reporting companies:
- Check a box in profile edit to state full reporting according to principles set out by WBCSD in 2011 (a global organisation dealing exclusively with businesses and sustainable development)
- may elect to use a green tick, which you will see in the top right corner of any profile
- green tick also appears in tabulated data
- histogram colour in analytics is blue rather than black
- trend annotation helps report on reasons for trend changes
- roll-over question marks
provide more information
MORE ABOUT US
Ecodesk is a free platform for everyone, from the very largest organisations in the world to the very smallest, to communicate sustainability information. Since 2006, we have worked tirelessly to simplify, innovate and engage business to help save resources and mitigate risk.
Ecodesk is not a methodology, a certification, or a ratings agency. We simply reflect best practice in sustainability and we offer premium and enterprise analytics for those that want to dig a little deeper. Ecodesk has one overriding vision – for all business worldwide to measure and communicate sustainability data, because it makes good economic sense to do so. Everything flows from this.
