Thinking about Sustainability Reporting?
A beginner’s guide to help you get started

www.mmta.co.uk

Why bother with ‘sustainability reporting’?
Sustainability reporting can help companies gain competitive advantage
and increase profits through more efficient processes.
Sustainability reports need to be based on actual actions taken in acompany. The process of creating a report requires reflection, discussion
and buy-in, all valuable activities to guarantee the long term survival of abusiness.
This guide will take you through the steps to creating a sustainability
report that is targeted towards the SME members of the MMTA.

2What is Sustainability?
Business sustainability is often defined as managing the triple bottom line: financial, socialand environmental risks, obligations and opportunities.
Another way of putting it is ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising theability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ [World Council for EconomicDevelopment (WCED)]
Or even more simply, ‘profits, people and planet’.
Many companies communicate these plans to their stakeholders through their annual report
and/or a separate ‘sustainability report’. Sustainability reports usually follow a framework.
The most commonly used is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The United Nations Global
Compact’s ten principles can also be used as a simple template to get started. This guide uses
the GRI as its basis.

Why communicate about sustainability?
Here are some of the main reasons a company may choose to report:Transparency and reputation

Customer requests (immediate customer and/or end users/consumers )Ethical Behaviour – acting in with ‘good values’ which may include fairness, equality anddiversity

Supplier requests for informationCompanies can gain valuable feedback from stakeholders so that they may better
position themselves in the marketplace

Attract new businessCompliance / license to operate (in certain markets)3Summary of the steps
By completing the steps below, you will have the basics of a sustainability report for your company. Additional help andinformation for each is contained in the following pages.

What is your company’s contribution to society
over and above making profits?

Vision

How will your company interact with markets,the natural environment and society in a waythat will allow it to survive and prosper in thelong-term?
What are the issues of greatest importance toyour business continuity and success?

Materiality

MeasureWhat issues are of greatest importance to yourinternal and external stakeholders? (These will
include your customers, employees, suppliers,and local community.)
What gets measured gets managed – what are
the core sustainability indicators that are
relevant for your business?
Maybe start with the top five first – p.11 will
help you to identify these.

Manage your sustainability goals as you would
any business goals.

ManageBearing your vision in mind, create a two-year
action plan for how you will manage the goals.

Delivery

Produce your report!

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In DetailBenchmarking

VisionWhat do you add to society beyond making profits? This includes
things like providing raw materials essential for certain technologies,
business services which reduce risk and save other businesses
money/time. Minor metals are used in a myriad of technologies
including renewable energy and for electric vehicles. Speak to MMTAfor information.
How will your company interact with markets, the naturalenvironment and society in a way that will allow it to survive andprosper in the long-term?
How can you continue to meet market demand and reduce yourimpact on factors along the supply chain?
My company’s sustainability vision is:

Beyond a strapline, looking at
what others are doing is very
important in developing yourown sustainability activities.
There are numerous databases
and ranking systems forsustainability reports.
Try looking at:- The GRI database which canbe filtered by industry, regionand size of business- Dow Jones Sustainability
Index lists the top rated
reports from multinationals

What are the end uses of thematerials you are supplying?
Industries such as automotive,
aerospaceand
hardwaremanufacturers will have theirown sustainability reports andinitiatives you can look at.
Try making a short phrase or strap line that sums up your social
mission. Take some time to brainstorm this within your company
and look at examples of other companies you do business with, oreven your competitors.
Here are some examples:
H C Starck - Committed to mankind and the environment / solutions
for today and tomorrow
Rio Tinto - Supporting our license to Operate
KGHM - Our way to sustainability

Strapline ideas:

5It may be useful to look at
different
industries,
forexample the metal industry
has learnt lessons from thewood and paper industry bylooking at the Forestry
Stewardship Council (FSC).

In Detail
Materiality - Part I
Establishing your company's ‘materiality’ is the most important and time consuming step, but getting thisright will create a focused report that holds up under scrutiny. An example of a poorly done materiality
assessment would be a mining company focussing in their report on office paper recycling rather than theenvironmental impact of their mine.

Firstly, who are your stakeholders?
Potential stakeholders

How important are they for your business(1 – 10)? (1 is low and 10 high)Customers
Employees
Suppliers
Local Community
Neighbours
Trade or othercommodity
associations
Local authorities
Local environmentalorganisations
Finance or insurance
providers
Others (specify)

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What do they want from yourbusiness other than a financial
relationship?

In Detail
Materiality– Part II
What are the issues (indicators) of greatest importance to your business continuity
and success?
Pick around five issues to start with and focus on these. Once you feel you have made progress with thisfirst set of measures, you can introduce others. Pages 8, 9 and 10 have the in-depth information for eachof these indicators.

Environmental:
Energy consumption (electricity, water, fuel in vehicles, etc)
Business travel (car mileage, air travel, etc)
Waste generated or recycled
Workplace:
Employee satisfaction, absenteeism,
turnover, injuries,
diversity,progression,development
andtraining,performance management, etc
Customers & Suppliers:
Satisfaction, complaints, on-time, payments, etc
Community Measures:
Donations, volunteering, in kind support

7In Detail
Materiality in-depth
MeasureDetailEnvironmental

Electricity consumption per year (kWh) – track yourconsumption and measure the impact of energy-saving
measures: lights, appliances, air conditioning, temperaturelevels, efficient lighting, insulation, even an energy audit.
Energy is a key cost to the business, so savings impact thebottom line.
Fuel consumption per year (litres) – track consumption of fuelby the company and reduction through education or incentives
to staff, and changes to working practices.
Fuel is a key cost to the business, so savings impact the bottomline.
Business travel miles – track distances travelled by all staff onbusiness. Changes to travel, e.g. greater use of virtual meetings,
may also save costs and time.

Your carbon footprint

This can be calculated from your energy (electricity and fuels)
consumption and flights.
Total water consumption per year – again this is a cost to thebusiness, one which may increase in the medium- to long-term.
Water saving measures and devices will save money, as well as
conserve water.
Total waste generation per year – more difficult to measure, as
this requires a means to weigh all waste before disposal.
Increasingly there is a cost to waste and any reduction is apotential cost saving. Is there a way that you can make moneyfrom your waste?
Total waste recycled per year – if you have a system to measurewaste generation, measuring how much is routed to recycling
should be manageable. This may be a source of revenue
generation. Some companies have created valuable revenues
from their waste.

8In Detail
Materiality in-depth
MeasureDetail

Workplace
Measures

Employee Satisfaction – correlates directly to employee motivation,
loyalty and productivity. Any business needs high productivity and low
turnover, especially a small business. Understanding satisfaction can bemeasured through face-to-face conversations. These may form part ofthe performance review process. A written survey could be completed,e.g. using survey monkey, which is free and online. Satisfied employees
help you grow your business.
Absenteeism – absenteeism is a direct cost to the business and causes
disruption. Low absenteeism is another indicator of employee
commitment and satisfaction. High absenteeism will affect your ability
to operate and grow as a business.
Turnover – high turnover creates a cost to the business in terms ofrecruitment, training and supervision of new staff. SMEs with highturnover cannot reach their potential. This measure demonstrates how
effective the business is at choosing the right people and allowing themto reach their potential within the business.
Accidents – this measure provides insights into how to create a safer
working environment, and how well the business is complying withsafety legislation. Each lost day is a cost to the business too.

Development – businesses that invest in employee training anddevelopment generally see better performance and higher retention
rates. Development does not need to be formal training, it may beallowing employees to work on more challenging projects or giving them
new responsibilities. Publishing a commitment to development may
attract higher quality recruits also.
Diversity – promoting diversity, whether gender, ethnicity or age
diversity ensures the business is making the most of the entire talentpool available. Many large companies look for suppliers that candemonstrate a commitment to diversity. Many top graduates look for apositive attitude to diversity when looking at a potential employer.

9In Detail
Materiality in-depth
MeasureDetailCustomer

Customer satisfaction – this is an essential component of your businesssustainability: without customers you have no business.
Develop a mechanism to record customer satisfaction and if you manage it
effectively, you will gain insights which are important to the future of yourbusiness, as well as demonstrating to your customers that you arecommitted to them.
Customer quality : complaints/Product quality: complaints - tracking thenumber of justified complaints is an indication of the health of your businessprocesses. These are issues of great importance to your customers.
Tracking this information may be uncomfortable at first, but it is the basis forimprovement.

Supplier

Supplier satisfaction – your suppliers may be critically important to yourbusiness continuity.
How do they view working with you? How can you make it easier for themto give you their best service? You may discover ways to create greater
efficiency or collaboration, or you may discover risks to your supply chain.
Supplier on-time payments – How do your suppliers rate your performanceat paying them on-time? Your suppliers may also be SMEs and on-time
payments may be essential to their cash flow. This is probably the mostimportant thing you can do for your suppliers.

Community
Measures

Cash and in-kind donations to local community causes/Staff volunteering –as an SME you probably won’t have lots of cash to donate to the local
community. Do you produce products that have value, which could be
donated to the local community? Do you have space that you are able to
make available for a community group to use? Are you able to donate thetime of your staff? Track the value of any cash or in-kind donations, forexample what is the value of an hour of a member of staff’s time? Whatwould it cost them to rent a room for a day? What is the value of theproduct you have donated? This helps you to understand the actual cost of
your commitment to the community. Your employees may be members of
the community and they will find this motivating. Track the number ofemployees who volunteer in the community, as well as the total hours ofcommunity volunteering your employees undertake.

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In Detail

Targets in action
Alcoa

Manage and measure

How do I manage and measure my indicators?
Making goals


Having chosen your top three to five sustainability indicators,
create a plan to manage these over a two-year period. It’s
better to show good progress across two or three areas thanpoor progress over a larger number of goals.

Make the goals manageable, have a baseline measurementand track changes with your report.

Make these goals part of your overall business plan for theperiod.

Assign clear responsibilities to specific individuals. And makethem part of their personal goals to ensure that they are given
the same focus and rigour as other areas of their role.



Remember, these indicators can improve your business andsave you money, so they are important to the business, notjust window dressing.

Tracking
Include milestones in your action plan to ensure that you stay on
track throughout the year and not just at year-end when it’s too lateto go back and make changes.

Final Exercise
How do you imagine your business in the long-term?
Governments and large companies often have documents
outlining the next 20-30 years– Roadmap 2050 from the EU is agood example envisioning the low carbon economy of the future.
Try it yourself:

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From a 2005 baseline, a 30%
reduction in total (direct andindirect)
carbondioxideequivalent (CO2) intensity in
GlobalPrimary
Products(refining and smelting) by
2020; 35% by 2030.
BoeingBoeing is committed tomaintaining 2012 levels forgreenhouse gas emissions,water use and solid waste tolandfill through 2017, even as
our business continues to grow
ArcelorMittal
To ensure steel’s recyclability isadequately valued in productmarkets.
To enhance our capabilities insteel recycling.

In Detail
Deliver your Report
Producing a report can be both expensive and time consuming, but reporting on a low budget is very
achievable.
Start off simple- any report is better than no report. It is possible to build and develop over several years.

Practical considerations- What resources do you have available?
- What’s your budget- Which reporting framework will you use? (examples given at the beginning were GRI and UNGC, but there
may be a better one out there for your business)- What format? Online only? Print?
- What period will the report cover? From what period is/ could data be available from?

Structure of the report– it is often a good idea to make chapters covering different aspects– Operations,
Human Resources, Local Community depending on what you have decided is material to your business.
Collect data and illustrative stories– has your company been in the local press? Do you share news
internally? Using stories makes the report easier to read and memorable to your stakeholders.
Design your report– this is an area where costs savings can be substantial but a simple design can also lookgood.

Don’t forget to send your report to your key stakeholders (and the MMTA who will publish it on theirwebsite)

For further help, speak to the MMTA and learn how we can help you.
The MMTA offers a sustainability consulting service to MMTA members.

12Helpful Resources
Global Reporting Initiative
https://www.globalreporting.org/Pages/default.aspxBCorp
http://www.bcorporation.net/
United Nations Global Compact
Http://www.unglobalcompact.org/
ICMM- Sustainability Tool Kit
http://www.icmm.com/materials-stewardship-toolkit/
2 Degrees Network- post your questions and read articles
https://www.2degreesnetwork.com/groups/2degrees-community/
News on sustainability
http://www.triplepundit.com/
http://www.greenbiz.com/

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The Minor Metals Trade Association (MMTA) has made every effort to ensure that the information presented is technicallycorrect. However, MMTA does not represent or warrant the accuracy of the information contained in this case study or its
suitability for any general or specific use. The reader is advised that the material contained herein is for information purposes
only; it should not be used or relied upon for any specific or general application without first obtaining competent advice.
MMTA, its members, staff and consultants specifically disclaim any and all responsibility of any kind for loss, damage, or injury
resulting from the use of the information contained in this publication.

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