File those green reports

A new global standard for companies to voluntarily report the social and environmental consequences of their activities was launched last week. With funding from the UN, the Global Reporting Initiative has compiled 90 issues that large companies should report on annually. But there’s no guarantee that they will. In 2000, Prime Minister Tony Blair challenged the top 350 companies in Britain to publish annual environmental reports by the end of 2001, but only 79 of them made the deadline. “We need a new law to make sure that companies make these reports and take the results seriously,” says Friends of…