Higher priority

It’s my opinion that companies have substantially higher priority in meeting needs for mandatory environmental disclosure than in taking opportunities for voluntary disclosures. By mandatory, I mean disclosure to meet the requirements of SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) regulations and FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) standards, in particular. By voluntary, I refer to disclosures for other purposes. Typically, voluntary environmental disclosures take a purpose of portrayal of “environmental responsibility” and are distributed separately from mandatory disclosure information.

I think attention to mandatory disclosure has substantially higher priority for two reasons. First, there virtually always are limited manpower resources to apply. Spending them on meeting requirements and on tuning the environmental disclosure process for accuracy and efficiency seems generally wiser than taking on efforts of voluntary disclosures. Second, the information reported may seem different. A risk is that mandatory information be perceived as incomplete or inaccurate by comparison. While certainly not an intent, it could be an unfortunate result.

I contend that keeping the environmental disclosure organ healthy in the corporate body by attending to mandatory disclosure is generally a better-advised allocation of limited resources than taking on additional efforts of voluntary disclosures.