How do companies embed sustainability?

Numerous organisations around the world are working to create ‘tools’ to assist businesses in applying sustainability in their strategies and everyday operations.

IFAC Sustainability Framework

The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) launched a Sustainability Framework in 2009.
http://web.ifac.org/sustainability-framework/splash

Climate Change resources at your fingertips …
IFAC's Sustainability Framework now has a resources section dedicated to climate change policy developments. It lists various links to articles and research on issues such as carbon disclosure, cap-and-trade systems, and sustainability reporting.
Click Here.

Sustainability Decision-Making Model

The Accounting for Sustainability Project was established by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. The organisation produces guidance and tools for embedding sustainability into organisations. One of these tools is a sustainability decision-making model, which is a step-by-step guide on how to embed sustainability into an organisation. It comes with practical examples.
http://www.accountingforsustainability.org/embedding/

Connected Reporting Framework

The Accounting for Sustainability Project promotes sustainability and develops tools and guidelines to assist organisations to implement sustainability strategies and practices. One of the tools it has developed is the Connected Reporting Framework. The Framework builds on the work of the GRI and other organisations. This tool is an attempt to provide clearer, more consistent and comparable information for use inside the organisation and externally. It also envisaged that the model will provide a better picture of the connected nature of an organisation’s actions. The model seeks to demonstrate how all areas of organisational performance can be presented in a connected way, driven by organisational strategy.
http://www.accountingforsustainability.org/reporting/

The principles which underlie the Framework are: Sustainability issues need to be clearly linked to the organisation's overall strategy; Sustainability and more conventional financial information should be presented together so that a more complete and balanced picture of the organisation's performance is given; There should be consistency in presentation to aid comparability between years and organisations.

The Connected Reporting Framework has the following five key elements.

1. An explanation of how sustainability is connected to the overall operational strategy of an organisation and the provision of sustainability targets. The challenge is to ensure that in mainstream reporting the sustainability information included is strategically important. Targets are important to ensure and demonstrate that sustainability issues are taken into account when making investment decisions.
2. Five key environmental indicators, which all organisations should consider reporting, they are: greenhouse gas emissions, energy usage, water use, waste and significant use of other finite resources.
3. Other key sustainability information should be given where the business or operation has material impacts. The Framework is not prescriptive in this respect to avoid the provision of irrelevant information and a "one-size-fits-all" approach.
4. To aid performance appraisal, industry benchmarks for the key performance indicators when available.
5. The up-stream and down-stream impact of the organisation's products and services: the sustainability impacts of its suppliers and the use of its products or services by customers and consumers.