Framework for a sustainability report - How could a sustainability report for Chalmers be designed and what components should it contain?

Abstract: Chalmers University of Technology has identified a need to publish a sustainability report. This thesisaims to act as a framework for the report, by investigating what components Chalmers’ sustainabilityreport ought to contain and whom it should target. The thesis also gives guidance on how theinformation needed for the report can be collected and how it preferably should be published.The thesis comprises a rather extensive section on important events and common concepts relatedto the field of sustainable development, in order to assure that readers without education in thisfield will have a sufficient foundation to understand the basic rationale and contemporary history tothe relatively new phenomenon of sustainability reports. The reader to this report learns that themotives for producing a sustainability report differ for the different reporting entities. Commonadvantages with a sustainability report may be increased loyalty with customers, increasedtransparency and it can be a source for cost savings; a sustainability report may also in someindustries merely be an order-qualifier. In order to achieve these advantages, a proper identificationof the target groups to the report needs to be conducted, which usually is a smaller group than thestakeholders in general. This thesis presents four suggestions to target groups for Chalmers’sustainability report: future students, employees, other universities and alliances/networks; thesegroups may have to be convinced of the virtue of sustainability reports.Further this thesis includes an empirical examination of environmental reports and sustainabilityreports published by eleven different actors. The reporting of environmental indicators are often wellaligned with the recommendations from Global Reporting Initiative, which is the most influentialactor on sustainability reporting, whereas reporting on social indicators differ between reportingentities and the indicators for economic sustainability are under-developed. Tendencies are presentthat the field of sustainability reports will be more regulated in the future; Chalmers does nothowever at this state need to focus too much on this but can concentrate on finding indicators thatmirror the activities of the university. Chalmers must also follow the debate on how the reporting ofeconomic sustainability is best carried out, and adapt this to its own organization and activities whenit comes to research and education.Generally, literature says very little about how information can be collected practically but more thatit has to be integrated in the regular routines in order not to get too expensive or time consuming.For Chalmers, the information needed for social and economic reporting can, in most cases, bewithdrawn from the regular human resources and financial information systems whereas routinesneed to be developed for data collection to the environmental indicators. The environmentalreporting should be based on the demands from ISO 14001 certification, which Chalmers intends tobe certified according to, in order not do conduct a double workload.