Auditors jump on green bandwagon

Cape Town - Greater pressure on firms to reduce their carbon footprint has created a new market for auditing firms.

Auditing firm Nolands has entered into a partnership with eco-auditors PlanetWorks to provide a service to companies wishing to calculate, monitor and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The King III Code on corporate management places greater emphasis than before on reporting environmental sustainability. This amplified code comes into operation on March 1.

In a statement, Nolands declares that reducing a company's carbon footprint is more complex than merely recycling office refuse and planting drought-resistant greenery.

Nolands CEO Alan Keet says most small to medium-sized firms will not reduce their carbon footprint unless there is an immediate benefit, or serious negative consequences for not doing so. The challenge is to show that it is profitable to be environmentally sensitive.

PlanetWorks has compiled a sustainability scorecard to help companies set targets for improving their friendliness to the environment.

At the recent Copenhagen climate summit, auditing concerns called on political leaders to make reporting on companies' exposure to and behaviour towards climate change a compulsory part of financial reporting.

They also asked for a uniform system of internationally recognised reporting standards on climate change. The 13 auditing firms, including the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, requested that standards be based on existing frameworks such as the Greenhouse Gas Corporate Standard, also known as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

Nowadays, all the major auditing firms like KPMG and Ernst & Young have sustainability issue specialists advising companies on carbon footprint reporting.

- Sake24.com

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