Sustainability and Business

Individual Assignment 2

Global Reporting Initiatives of P&G

Industry: FMCG

Name: Muskan Valbani

Section: H

Roll No: PGP/24/456

Hindustan Unilever Limited bi-annually prepares its Sustainable Living Report which
conforms with the GRI Standards. The reporting period followed is from 1 st January to 31st
December with disclosures of most material topics in the reports and the index contains
following disclosures:

GRI codes/Categories Description

Environmental Sustainable and responsible sourcing
measures + Packaging and waste + Water+
Climate Change measures such as Material
usage, Biodiversity, Supplier Environment
assessment, Energy, Emissions etc.
Economic/ Sustainability EVA, Scale of organisation, Markets served,
Profile components (organisational
structure) Integration of economic and
social goals, linkage with long term
decision-making and performance issues
Health & Safety (Labour practices) Total Workforce employed + Human Rights
+ Plans/objectives relating to occupational
health & safety standards + Nutritional Diet
disclosures
Others Management Performance + Product
Performance + External Relations + Mission
statements + values + other indicators

Of these, the major disclosures pertain to Life-Cycle impacts of the chain of its products,
Energy emissions, Emissions/inputs relating to waste materials/ hazardous waste, firm wide
eco-efficiency benchmarks. These disclosures (in line with GRI) makes sense for a FMCG
company like HUL because:

- Diversified Product Portfolio and Extensive Material usage by the firm: HUL being
on eof the topmost FMCG company by market share and revenue size, should
continue with GRI reporting as the alignment of all sustainable practices across the
product portfolio and considering the complex value chain of the company GRI
reporting can help gauge the substantial environmental impact of company and its
sustainability reporting for credibility, accountability, and transparency.
- Transparency with and engagement of stakeholders
- Platform for HUL to demonstrate its role in the changing climatic landscape and gain
a competitive advantage over peers with improved and enhanced reporting
- Better articulation of sustainability vision and strategy along with a clear
understanding of risks/threats as well as opportunities relating to sustainability
projects
However, the Reporting of standards do have a scope for improvement due to certain
observations made in actually reportings by the firm
- The focus still remains on the end goals rather than on the procedures
- GRI indicators are scattered across annual reports and the USLP development report
with no consistency in reporting and lot of information seems to be missing
- The reports seem to be “green-washing” company’s image rather than objectively
stating facts. This defeats the very purpose of using GRI
- Better demarcation of results according to the geographical impact of the initiatives;
since USLP is under Unilever, HUL also reports much of the figures of USLP under
its own sustainability report thus undermining the impact in the territory of India in
specific.
Thus it is recommended that HUL should continue with GRI reporting standards for the
above mentioned reasons and at the same time it needs to work on the aforementioned
issues to ensure transparency and credibility in its sustainability reporting.