Chinese enterprises should improve their environmental information: Report

Enterprises in China did not perform well in environmental information disclosure in 2017, but they made "a little" progress compared with the previous year, said an evaluation report released by Beijing University of Chemical Technology on Sunday.

Invited by the China Forum of Environmental Journalists, the university surveyed listed companies in stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen to evaluate their work in reporting environmental issues in 2017 and received responses from 857 companies.

The report said that 85 percent of the companies evaluated got scores of less than 50. A full score is 100.

In terms of the disclosure level of different industries, mining, hotels, catering, and transportation ranked at the top in order, while information, public health, scientific research and media were at the bottom.

Liu Qingsong, deputy secretary-general of the China Forum of Environmental Journalists, said that the report aimed to improve enterprises' awareness of protecting the environment and encouraging them to publicize their environmental information.

"Listed companies should firmly implement this disclosure system and accept supervision from the public. The system also can help them to improve the quality of the business," he said.

Liu Xuezhi, a professor of low carbon economy at Beijing University of Chemical Technology who conducted the survey, suggested that to boost the transparency of environmental information, laws and guidelines should be carried out by the government to offer enterprises standards when disclosing its information.

"Enterprises in China should learn from their counterparts abroad, that is besides annual environmental report, to make use of more media channels, such as Weibo, to interact with the public. Also, investors should take the ability of environmental information disclosure into consideration before making the decision," she added.