Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai
Hong Kong's MSW Charing Scheme will take effect from 1 April 2024. This going to bring significant impacts on businesses, especially for the Food & Beverage (F&B) industry. The F&B companies could collaborate with professional consultants to establish effective tailored waste management strategies.
On 14 April 2023, the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (“the Exchange”) under the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (“HKEX”) published a consultation paper seeking market feedback on proposals to enhance climate-related disclosures under the Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”) framework. The Exchange proposes to mandate all issuers to make climate-related disclosures in their ESG reports, and introduce new climate-related disclosures aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board (“ISSB”) Climate Standard. With the proposed effective date of 1 January 2024, the interim provisions (shorter or simpler version) of certain disclosures are proposed for the first two reporting years following the effective day.
The key idea of “ESG” has been deeply infiltrated into the of China and Hong Kong
GreenCo has recently launched a brand-new ESG advisory package for companies planning an IPO, in which it supports all IPO applicants looking for compliance and excellence in ESG management with recommended planning and preparation measures.
GreenCo has introduced new digital assessment and management tools to respond to the megatrend of sustainable funds.
GRI announced the launch of GRI 306: Waste 2020, the first globally applicable tool for organisations to report and communicate on their waste impacts. GRI 306: Waste 2020 reflects global best practices on waste management and will be effective for reports and other materials published on or after 1 January 2022.
With increasing awareness of social and population health impacts private sectors have, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) have been working on a project named Culture of Health for Business (COH4B), aiming to push the companies to think differently on how they can affect the population health and society, through exploring business practices that have discrete health and business impacts.
The huge slap of this COVID-19 epidemic on most enterprises made it hard for us to imagine how the aftermath and indirect impacts of the disaster will change the socio-economic structure and business development models. In the post-pandemic era, how to cumulate the experience from setbacks and use the brand new financial values and management system called‘ESG’to empower corporate sustainability development will be a new trend of global development.
Business and climate change have mutual impacts on each other. Business influences climate change with climate-related reporting today laying more emphasis on different business models’ carbon footprint while climate change does sway business models to some extent with the reporting promoted by Task Force on Climate-related financial disclosures (TCFD) focusing on financial implications of climate change on business models.
With the increasing attention on the “informed market”, ESG information becomes more and more important to investors, who see an organised package of non-financial performance of companies as a powerful auxiliary tool-kit for analysis in making investment decisions. Providing sufficient ESG information not only informs investors in decision-making, but also allows them to gain confidence about the business development of a company in the long-term prospect.
