Once the province of a few unusually green or community-oriented companies, sustainability reporting is now a best practice employed by companies worldwide. A full 95 percent of the Global 250 issue sustainability reports, and by doing so gain a competitive edge in every aspect of the triple bottom line.

According to the Value of Sustainability Reporting study—a joint survey conducted by the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and EY—sustainability reporting offers a number of benefits. The majority of respondents believe that reporting improves reputation; while nearly 40 percent find it to increase employee loyalty.

Now, the conversation is no longer about whether a company should report, but rather what they should consider when they do. Recently, Katherine Smith, the executive director at the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, sat down to speak with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) about the challenge of addressing income inequality and the future use of our natural resources. This was all part of GRI's Reporting 2025, a new project established to discover major issues that will be on companies' agendas in the years to come.