As companies discover the monetary benefits of a positive environmental image, a proliferation of green imaging confounds the public sphere. The consequence becomes the disarticulation of terms like environmental excellence, sustainable development, and minimum environmental harm. Because the oversaturation of greening efforts has elicited public distrust, stakeholders need timely and accurate information regarding environmental claims. As a major vehicle for communicating these efforts, corporate environmental reports (CERs) are laden with colorful and sublime images. This study examines the functionality of images found in CERs from 27 industry leaders, applying Sonja Foss’s tenets of visual rhetorical analysis to identify the nature and function of the images and offer an evaluation based on emergent themes. Because images are increasingly important to corporate transparency, the study concludes with several best practice recommendations to serve as ethical image design strategies and to reflect the ways companies address impactful operations.

In Sweden, there are limits to how much leachable substances waste must contain in order to be deposited as hazardous waste. Fly ash from waste incineration often end up over the limit, mainly due to the chloride content. Fly ash is therefore often deposited abroad. The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility to handle fly ash locally. To clarify how the law is applied, environmental reports and permit documents from ten waste sites with permission to deposit fly ash were studied. In addition, a literature study was made to review the state of knowledge regarding the treatments of fly ash. The treatment methods are numerous, but are at different levels of commerciality. Among the treatments available there are both physical, chemical, biological, electrical and thermal variants. Many of the treatments (except for carbonation and microbial bioleaching) results in chloride levels below the limits. Several are however unrealistically expensive or generate wastewater with high levels of chloride that would need further treatment. Three plants out of the ten holding permits to deposit fly ash, have exemptions from the limit for chlorides. It's however difficult to see a common reasoning for allowing exemptions. In several cases there are sensitive receiving waters downstream from the landfill. One reason to be dispensed despite this sensitivity, may be the guidance that EPA issued. It is not formulated any specific concerns relating to chlorides. One handles therefore often high levels of chloride in the leachate as a dilution problem, not a leaching problem. / I Sverige finns det gränsvärden för hur mycket utlakningsbara ämnen avfall får innehålla för att kunna deponeras som farligt avfall. Flygaska från avfallsförbränning hamnar ofta över gränsen för vad som får deponeras, främst p.g.a. kloridinnehållet, och askan deponeras därför bl.a. i Norge och Tyskland. Syftet med denna studie var att utreda möjligheten att hantera flygaska lokalt. För att klargöra hur lagstiftningen tillämpas har miljörapporter och tillståndsbeslut från tio avfallsanläggningar med tillstånd att deponera flygaska studerats. Dessutom har en litteraturstudie gjorts av kunskapsläget när det gäller behandling av flygaska för att motverka lakning av klorider. Behandlingsmetoderna är många, men har kommit olika långt i att anses som kommersiella. Bland behandlingarna finns både fysiska, kemiska, biologiska, elektriska och termiska varianter. Många av behandlingarna (med undantag för karbonatisering och mikrobiell bioutlakning) gör att gränsvärden för utlakning av klorider klaras. Många av behandlingarna är dock orealistiskt dyra eller genererar avloppsvatten med höga kloridhalter. Av de tio anläggningar som innehar tillstånd till att deponera flygaska, så har tre även dispens för gränsvärdet för klorider. Utifrån den information som finns i tillståndsbesluten är det mycket svårt att se ett mönster vad gäller bedömningen av de enskilda fallen. I flera fall finns känsliga recipienter nedströms deponin. En anledning till att dispens ges trots denna känslighet kan vara den vägledning som Naturvårdsverket gett ut. Där formuleras inte någon specifik problematik kring klorider, utan andra ämnen är i fokus. Man behandlar därför ofta höga kloridhalter i lakvatten som ett utspädningsproblem, istället för ett utlakningsproblem.

The broad aim of this research was to assess the decision-usefulness of environmental reports produced by South African companies that are listed on the Johanessburg Securities Exchange (JSE) to users of the reports. The study was motivated by a lack of research on the decision-usefulness of environmental reports in South Africa. The study was conducted in two phases. The first phase in form of a content analysis evaluated the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports of top 100 JSE-listed South African companies using a control list and a judgement scale. The second phase in form of a questionnaire survey was aimed at determining, the information needs of users of environmental reports produced by South African companies (that are listed on the JSE), the extent to which they read and employ the reports for making decisions. In addition, this phase was meant to ascertain the degree of users' satisfaction with the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports as well as elicit their suggestions on ways of improving the reports. Furthermore, the second phase was aimed at determining the users’ perception of the relative importance of environmental reports as well as ascertaining whether there was an expectation gap between the users and the preparers of the reports with regard to their decision-usefulness. The results of the content analysis phase of the study indicate that the environmental reports of the sampled companies were decision-useful, however their decision-usefulness varied widely. Although decision-useful, the environmental reports of the sampled companies were not comparable. In addition, the environmental reports of companies from sectors with a significant impact on the environment, and those of large companies were more decision-useful than the reports of companies from sectors with an insignificant impact on the environment and those of smaller companies. The results of the questionnaire survey phase of the study indicate that users prefer balanced environmental reports that disclose both negative and positive aspects that identify and describe key relevant issues, that are specific and contain accurate information, and that provide future oriented information. In addition, users prefer environmental reports that identify and address key stakeholders and their concerns, demonstrate the integration of environmental issues into core business processes, and that compare quantitative impacts against best practice. Furthermore, the results also indicate that users do read environmental reports, mostly from companies’ websites Portable Document Format (PDF) annual reports and that they mostly use the environmental reports for research, their own knowledge, and to hold companies accountable. However, users are not fully satisfied with the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports as they feel that there is a need to improve the reports in order to make them more decision-useful. The results also indicate that users perceive environmental reports to be more important than any other type of reports, most notably the financial reports. Comparing the responses of the users to those of preparers on various issues pertaining to the decision-usefulness of environmental reports, significant differences were found between the views of the two groups. These differences provide ample evidence that is consistent with the existence of an environmental reporting expectation gap in South Africa. This study makes several original contributions to environmental reporting literature, most notable of which is that, it is the first study in the South African context to empirically evaluate the quality (decision-usefulness) of environmental reports in line with the accounting conceptual frameworks and the GRI guidelines combined. By so doing, the study introduces to the academic literature an extensive five dimensional qualitative characteristic framework for evaluating the quality (decision-usefulness) of environmental reports. In addition, the study uniquely employs the decision-usefulness theory to provide insights into the environmental reporting practices of South African companies that are listed on the JSE. In so doing, it re-contextualises the theory that is typically employed in explaining financial reporting, and demonstrates its applicability in explaining the decision-usefulness of the environmental reporting practices of South African companies that are listed on the JSE. / Accounting / D. Com. (Accounting)

The broad aim of this research was to assess the decision-usefulness of environmental reports produced by South African companies that are listed on the Johanessburg Securities Exchange (JSE) to users of the reports. The study was motivated by a lack of research on the decision-usefulness of environmental reports in South Africa. The study was conducted in two phases. The first phase in form of a content analysis evaluated the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports of top 100 JSE-listed South African companies using a control list and a judgement scale. The second phase in form of a questionnaire survey was aimed at determining, the information needs of users of environmental reports produced by South African companies (that are listed on the JSE), the extent to which they read and employ the reports for making decisions. In addition, this phase was meant to ascertain the degree of users' satisfaction with the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports as well as elicit their suggestions on ways of improving the reports. Furthermore, the second phase was aimed at determining the users’ perception of the relative importance of environmental reports as well as ascertaining whether there was an expectation gap between the users and the preparers of the reports with regard to their decision-usefulness. The results of the content analysis phase of the study indicate that the environmental reports of the sampled companies were decision-useful, however their decision-usefulness varied widely. Although decision-useful, the environmental reports of the sampled companies were not comparable. In addition, the environmental reports of companies from sectors with a significant impact on the environment, and those of large companies were more decision-useful than the reports of companies from sectors with an insignificant impact on the environment and those of smaller companies. The results of the questionnaire survey phase of the study indicate that users prefer balanced environmental reports that disclose both negative and positive aspects that identify and describe key relevant issues, that are specific and contain accurate information, and that provide future oriented information. In addition, users prefer environmental reports that identify and address key stakeholders and their concerns, demonstrate the integration of environmental issues into core business processes, and that compare quantitative impacts against best practice. Furthermore, the results also indicate that users do read environmental reports, mostly from companies’ websites Portable Document Format (PDF) annual reports and that they mostly use the environmental reports for research, their own knowledge, and to hold companies accountable. However, users are not fully satisfied with the decision-usefulness of the environmental reports as they feel that there is a need to improve the reports in order to make them more decision-useful. The results also indicate that users perceive environmental reports to be more important than any other type of reports, most notably the financial reports. Comparing the responses of the users to those of preparers on various issues pertaining to the decision-usefulness of environmental reports, significant differences were found between the views of the two groups. These differences provide ample evidence that is consistent with the existence of an environmental reporting expectation gap in South Africa. This study makes several original contributions to environmental reporting literature, most notable of which is that, it is the first study in the South African context to empirically evaluate the quality (decision-usefulness) of environmental reports in line with the accounting conceptual frameworks and the GRI guidelines combined. By so doing, the study introduces to the academic literature an extensive five dimensional qualitative characteristic framework for evaluating the quality (decision-usefulness) of environmental reports. In addition, the study uniquely employs the decision-usefulness theory to provide insights into the environmental reporting practices of South African companies that are listed on the JSE. In so doing, it re-contextualises the theory that is typically employed in explaining financial reporting, and demonstrates its applicability in explaining the decision-usefulness of the environmental reporting practices of South African companies that are listed on the JSE. / Accounting / D. Com. (Accounting)

本研究蒐集各國企業所發行之獨立環境報告（Corporate Environmental Reports）共84份，採內容分析的研究方法，針對環境報告的內容進行研究分析。本研究建立一種評量模式，以聯合國環境規劃署（UNEP）所建議之環境報告揭露主題作為觀察評量單元，依揭露內容的完整性與相關主題的系統整合度，將環境報告于各單元的表現分為四個等級，依次給予0-3的權重分數，各單元所得分數加總即為整份環境報告的揭露成果。 本研究同時進行產業別與地區別的分析，依產業分為電力、汽車、能源、消費品、資本設備、化學、服務、森林產品與造紙等八種產業類別，將隸屬同一產業別的企業環境報告歸類分別進行分析比較，以電力與汽車兩種產業為例，摘出其產業中于各揭露主題表現最佳的範例置于本研究報告之中，作為樣本參考。本研究尚進行產業之間的比較，研究發現環境報告因產業特性而產生的揭露選擇與差異；地區別的分析則將環境報告依地區重新分類，分為美加、歐洲、北歐以及日本四個主要地區，觀察分析各地區報告的差異。 最後提出研究結論，歸納現階段環境報告揭露的主要內容，各產業之環境報告揭露選擇的差異，各地區環境報告的表現，以及提出對國內企業製作環境報告的建議。 目 錄 第一章 緒論 ……………………………………………………. 1 第一節 研究動機 ……………………………………………1 第二節 論文結構 …………………………………………... 3 第二章 文獻回顧 ……………………………………………….. 5 第一節 企業環境報告的重要性 ……………………………. 5 第二節 企業環境報告的演進及相關研究 ………………10 第三節 環境報告的指導方針與具體作法 ………………24 第四節 環境報告製作所遭遇的困難與待改進的問題 …31 第三章 研究方法 ………………………………………………35 第一節 研究架構 ………………………………………….35 第二節 研究對象 ………………………………………….39 第三節 研究方法與分析單元 …………………………….41 第四節 研究限制 ………………………………………….42 第四章 產業環境報告分析 ……………………………………..44 第一節 分析評量方法 ……………………………………..44 第二節 產業別分析 ……………………………………..48 一、 電力產業 ………………………………………….48 二、 汽車產業 ………………………………………….78 三、 能源產業 ………………………………………..106 四、 消費品產業 ……………………………………115 五、 資本設備產業 ……………………………………123 六、 化學產業 ………………………………………...131 七、 服務性產業 ……………………………………139 八、 森林產品與造紙產業 …………………………..146 第五章 產業別與地區別分析 ……………………………….155 第一節 產業別分析 ……………………………………155 第二節 地區別分析 ……………………………………172 第六章 結論與建議 ………………………………………...178 第一節 研究發現 ………………………………………...178 第二節 研究建議 ………………………………………...187 環境報告＆參考文獻 ………………………………………...189 / Abstract Out of strict environmental law, intensive market competition, and the trend toward sustainable development, the environmental responsibility has now become one of the essential elements in doing business. Under the pressure of stakeholders, such as employees, shareholders, and environmental groups, there are more and more enterprises trying to have their own presentation of environmental performance. Among the enterprises of Fortune 500, Three hundreds of them have environmental reports. They believe the environmental report is a good instrument for promoting their image of environmental protection as part of marketing strategy. In Taiwan, both the academic and the public have known very little about environmental report. In the meantime, there are only a few enterprises have their own environmental reports. Consequently, it is necessary for us to systemically examine the environmental reports of the leading company in the world to understand the contents and the level of the information they disclosed. The study collected and analyzed eighty-four standalone corporate environmental reports from different industries around world. Four major issues - management systems, input／output inventory, finance, and stakeholder relations, and twenty more detail disclosure subjects of environmental report suggested by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) are used as our research units. Via content analysis, we categorized content of these disclosure subjects into four degrees according to their qualitative, quantitative and systematic levels. The eight industries we studied are electrical & gas utilities, automobiles, energy, consumer goods, capital equipment, chemical, service, forest products and papers. We draw the best practice of each disclosure subject in electrical & gas utilities and automobiles as benchmark. In addition to analyze each industry, we compared the industries, summarized the average and the deviation of the disclosure in these twenty subjects, explored the priority of disclosure choice and discuss the differences cause of the industry's differences. We also analyzed by four regions - America-Canada, Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan, to observe and analyze the differences of the reports by the companies in different regions. The main findings of this research are: (1) Currently, the contents covered by most of the environmental reports are: 1. The "Environmental Policy" which declares the organization's determination to preserve the environment. 2. The operational "Environmental Management System". 3. The "organizational framework" which is responsible for environmental matters. 4. "The data of energy consumption and the effects of energy saving" which response the concerns of the scarcity of energy resource. 5. "The data of air emission and the reducing method " which response the greenhouse gas, global climate changes and local air pollution. 6. "The method of wastes disposal and the result of wastes reduction". 7. "The real effect to environment and consumers" by the operations and the products of business. (2) The disclosure by different industries in four main observed issues are: n Environmental Management Systems 1. Presentation environmental policy is a common consensus, but disclosure of the other three subjects - environmental management system, management responsibility and legal compliance has large variance. 2. The level of disclosure in the management system is not related to the nature of industry's character. 3. Energy industry has the most disclosure on legal compliance subject, and automobiles industry is least one. 4. Chemical and service industries' disclosures in this area are more conservative, and the rest six industries are at same level. n Input╱Output Inventory Unit 1. Wastes disposal, air emission, and energy consumption are the top three subjects most disclosed by all industries. Accidents and emergency response, water consumption, health and safety are the least three. 2. The nature of the industry will effect the disclosure priority. For example, automobiles industry pays much attention on reducing material and disposing with the wastes because it dealing with thousands of components. n Related Financial issues 1. The sequence of industry's disclosure in finance is forest products and papers, energy, consumer goods, chemical, service, electrical & gases utilities, capital equipment and automobiles. 2. Companies' disclosures of environmental spending have wide variance in each industry. n Stakeholder Relations Unit 1. Employees, industry association and local community are the top three stakeholders thought by all industries, so the disclosure information are mostly relevant to them. 2. The industry, which affects the environment badly, like energy and automobiles, will be monitored usually by the government agencies, regulators, or environmental protection group. Therefore, their disclosure performance about the issues is much better than others. (3) The disclosure performance differences of regions are: 1. Companies in Scandinavia region have better environment disclosure in management systems and input／output inventory issues, but the average performance in stakeholder relations unit is not as good in four regions, it appears that they have a large room to improve on that. 2. Companies in America-Canada region have the best disclosure performance in finance issues, but for those high pollution industry like chemical or energy industry still do not disclose their input and output information sufficiently. 3. The Japan companies' disclosure performance is not as good currently, but we found their environmental management system are established in most companies, they also interacted with stakeholders actively. So we think Japanese companies have the potential to perform better in the future and reach the world class. Finally, we make some suggestions about how to encourage companies in Taiwan to prepare their environmental reports. (1) Reasons and motivations for company to disclose its environmental information, such as: 1. The responsibility to the environment. 2. Response to the unavoidable trend. 3. Direct and indirect business benefits. 4. The demands from the stakeholders (2) Making corporate environmental report step by step First, establishes a web site, put the most important environmental information (like air emission or wastes disposal). Second, the company must establish its environmental management system, environmental department, and go a step further to report the more extensive input/output data. Third, connection with the shareholders includes employees, investors, legislators, regulators, industry associations and local communities, and keep well interaction with them. As long as you "say what you do, do what you say", then to publish an standalone environmental report with relevant content will be easy!

Swedish companies have invested a lot of time, effort and resources into becoming moreenvironmentally friendly. The primary focus of this on-going process has been to implementenvironmental management systems and to develop more environmentally friendlytechnologies. Measuring the effects of these actions has proven more difficult. Theintroduction of environmental indicators is emerging as a simple, yet effective way forcompanies to measure their environmental performance, increase the control of theirenvironmental activities and help the decision making process when developing new productsand processes. The aim of the project is to study to what extent eight Swedish companies in three differentbranches of industry use environmental indicators, if there are any similarities and differenceswithin and between branches and if any conclusions can be drawn. The companies chosen arethree companies within the pulp- and paper producing industry, three companies within theiron- and steel producing industry and two companies within the car manufacturing industry.The primary method of analysis is to study the environmental report from one factory of eachcompany, the environmental section of the financial report and/or the environmental report ofthe entire company or business group and environmental information on each company’s website. No interviews were conducted with any of the companies, since it was deemed that therewas not enough time if they were to be meaningful. Before the evaluation, the concept of environmental indicators needs further examination. Theindicators are comparative, comparing an environmental quantity to a financial one. Examplesof common indicators are energy use per quantity of produced product or emissions of CO2-equivalents per tonne of produced product. Since the denominator is the same, companieswith significantly different sizes of production can easily be compared to each other. Today itis hard if even possible to compare companies within the same branch to each other and evenharder to compare ones in different branches to each other or to branch indexes. The lack ofcommon guidelines for measuring, processing and presenting the results of environmentalperformance data is the biggest problem when using environmental indicators today. The environmental indicators can be used in a number of different roles. Today they are usedto measure and compare the environmental performance of a company as well as tools forcommunication to various stakeholders. If the companies continue to develop the indicators,they can be used pro-actively in the decision making process as well as to highlight problemareas and to track the progress towards goals set by the company. Some of the companies inthis report are already using indicators in one or more of the advanced roles. All the companies were evaluated in two different ways, qualitatively and quantitatively atthree levels of reporting. The three levels were the environmental report from a single factory,the environmental report for the entire company/business group and the environmentalinformation on the Internet from each company. The qualitative evaluation analysed how the companies used environmental indicators, if thecompanies used them explicitly, if they used them to track goals and if there were differencesbetween the different levels of reporting. The analysis showed that only a few companies usedenvironmental indicators at the single factory level, but that all companies used them in thebusiness group reports and on the Internet. There was also a much higher degree of coherencybetween the companies financial reporting than there was in their environmental one. Thequalitative evaluation also showed that the pulp- and paper companies used the mostenvironmental indicators, the iron- and steel companies used them most effectively and thatthe car companies used them to their fullest extent. The quantitative evaluation analysed each company by itself to examine how each individualcompany used the environmental indicators. The differences between the use of indicators atthe different levels of reporting also became more evident. The pulp- and paper companieswere the most consistent while the iron- and steel companies had the biggest differences withthe car companies somewhere in between. The analysis also showed that companies that werepart of bigger business groups had bigger differences, especially if they were not part of themother company. There are two major conclusions that can be drawn from the report. The first one is thatcompanies use environmental indicators to measure and present their environmentalperformance because they see them as effective tools. The second one is that commonguidelines are necessary to develop the indicators further. The first conclusion can be drawn from the fact that all the companies use environmentalindicators as a tool for reporting their environmental performance in their primary channels ofinformation, the business group reports and on the Internet The second conclusion can be drawn from the fact that even though the companies werechosen because they produced different products, they turned out to have very similar types ofemissions but very different environmental indicators. Since all the companies are verysincere in their efforts to limit their impact, on the environment and the fact that they have allchosen environmental indicators to measure their impact the need for coherency is great forfurther development. It is doubtful that the companies themselves can develop the indicatorson their own which means that the authorities and possibly the branch organisations have towork together to develop common guidelines. The biggest challenges are to decide on thecommon rules of reporting and to put financial values on the environment. If these problemscan be resolved, environmental indicators can be used to their fullest potential in the future. / www.ima,kth.se