Updated March 2025
The Global Reporting Initiative is an international organization that publishes standards for sustainability reporting. In 2018, they transitioned from their existing GRI G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines to the new GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards. The reporting guidelines included supplements for specific sectors, which have now been superseded by the GRI Sector Standards.
The Sector Standards are an ongoing project, with the sector standard for the automotive industry yet to be released. While the prior Automotive Sector Supplement is now outdated, it still provides excellent insights into key aspects of sustainability with regard to industry-specific topics.
This post provides a comprehensive overview of the Automotive Sector Supplement and the indicators it covered, along with key principles to monitor and manage those aspects of your sustainability programs.
The GRI Automotive Sector Supplement at a Glance
These guidelines have been created through a collaborative effort between 13 automotive manufacturers from around the world (including Asia, the United States, and Europe), coming together to identify the most pertinent sustainability metrics that specifically address automotive manufacturers.
The Automotive Sector Supplement contains modifications to seven of the existing GRI sustainability indicators and 10 sustainability metrics that are specific to the automotive industry. By including these 17 changes in your GRI sustainability reporting, you’ll get more useful information out of your reports and have a better picture of where you stand amongst other automotive manufacturers.
What Makes the Automotive Industry Special
One of the reasons the GRI brought together automotive manufacturers to create the Automotive Sector Supplement is that the automotive industry operates much differently from other sectors. It has its own concerns that other manufacturers typically don’t need to worry about, and their supply chains are structured differently.
The forum responsible for creating the automotive sector supplement specifically noted that automotive manufacturers uniquely needed to account for the emissions and environmental & social impacts that are related to product use.
The group also identified topics of special interest that should be included in any automotive corporate sustainability program, even if they are difficult to quantify for GRI reporting:
- Life cycle assessments
- Design-for-the-Environment practices
- Selection of materials to avoid hazardous and toxic materials
- End-of-life systems, including Design-for-Disassembly and Design-for-Recycling
- Involvement of suppliers in product development
- Policies toward suppliers and supplier performance monitoring
Those last two points have been getting an increasing amount of attention lately, and, as we’ve noted before, automotive manufacturers are starting to approach their environmental compliance management through the supply chain.
Assessing suppliers and monitoring their sustainability performance is also an essential element of selecting the right materials – ERA calls it having a Gatekeeper System to vet materials from vendors before they enter your site and become your responsibility.
The Modified GRI Performance Indicators
Seven of the regular GRI sustainability performance indicators have been modified to apply to automotive manufacturing.
In most cases, these modifications haven’t reduced the amount of information reported - instead, they specifically increased the amount of data segmentation involved to more accurately reflect the supply chain structure of the industry.
GRI Indicator EC5
Total payroll and benefits of employees: this indicator has been modified to include segmentation by country or region, including reporting the wages for your company’s lowest-compensated and median-compensated full-time employees.
You should also note the national minimum wage for each region and country in which you employ workers.
GRI Indicator EN10
NOx, SOx, and other significant air emissions by type (for operations and processes, not for product use): automotive manufacturers should now also include VOC emissions in their GRI reporting.
GRI Indicator EN15
Percentage of product weight sold that is reclaimable and useful at the end of the product lifecycle and percentage that is actually reclaimed: the definition of “reclaiming” for automobiles refers to reusing and recovering materials as well as energy.
These types of reclaiming should be reported separately.
GRI Indicator PR1
Description of policies for preserving customer health and safety during use and the extent to which this policy is applied, as well as a description of procedures and programs to address this issue, including monitoring and results of this monitoring: the automotive industry should break this indicator down into three categories of safety:
- Reportable active safety features are those that avoid accidents, including braking systems or ergonomic design.
- Passive safety features are those that prevent injury to vehicle occupants and others on the road in the case of accidents, including seatbelts and airbags.
- Security features include door locks and theft deterrents.
All three categories should be reported separately.
GRI Indicator PR5
Number of complaints upheld by regulatory or similar official bodies to oversee and regulate product safety: the automotive forum noted that this information should be used as a quantitative measure for reporting customer health and safety for other GRI indicators, as it is difficult to account for every vehicular accident, and some reported accidents are due to driver error, not product issues.
GRI Indicator LA1
Breakdown of the workforce, where possible, by region/country, status, employment type (full-time or part-time), employment contract (definite or indefinite), and conjunction with other employers (e.g., temp agencies): automotive manufacturers should also provide data on the occupational distribution of their workforce according to these segments.
GRI Indicator LA9
Average hours of training per year per employee by category of employee: Automotive companies should provide qualitative information about whether investments in training and education are for skills development or for lifelong learning.
Essential Automotive Industry Sustainability Metrics
These sustainability indicators address the specific needs of automotive manufacturers that most other sectors typically do not need to worry about when it comes to sustainability tracking (e.g., lifecycle analysis, Design-for-Recycling, fuel economy, and supply chain performance monitoring).
The GRI automotive forum developed 10 new sustainability performance indicators that are unique to the automotive industry. In general, the data required for reporting is not complicated, and the Automotive Sector Supplement sustainability metrics are brief and concise. Automotive sector indicators all use an A identifier, regardless of whether they report on environmental, social, or economic aspects.
Social Sustainability Indicators
- Specify stipulated work hours per week and average hours worked overtime in production.
- Percentage of employees not managed on an hourly basis with overtime compensation schemes.
- Percentage of major first-tier supplier facilities with independent trade union organizations or other bonafide employee representatives. State the amount of purchases from these suppliers as a percentage of overall purchases.
Product Sustainability Indicators
- Number of vehicles sold, broken down by type, fuels, power train technologies, and by region. You should also include an explanatory definition for categorizing the different vehicle types.
- Breakdown by region/country of the compliance of vehicles sold with respective existing and next defined emissions standards.
- Average fuel economy by type of vehicle broken down by region, as applicable. The vehicle “type” for manufacturers of commercial vehicles refers to the vehicle “segment” in this case.
- Average carbon dioxide emissions by type of vehicle broken down by region, as applicable.
- Breakdown by region/country of compliance of vehicles sold with their respective existing and next-defined noise standards.
- The GRI automotive workgroup decided that reporters should use GRI indicator EN34 from the 2002 guidelines to account for the significant environmental impacts of transportation used for logistical purposes.
- Weight of the vehicle and percentage breakdown of generic, recyclable, and renewable material of a best-selling vehicle.
Enhancing Your Sustainability Reporting
The Automotive Sector Supplement highlights some important sustainability tracking practices, even for those manufacturers outside the automotive industry. One of the key principles identified by the GRI automotive workgroup is that supply chain sustainability is key to measuring your own business’ sustainability. For example, ensuring your product doesn’t contain any banned or toxic substances is most easily accomplished by rooting them out at the source before they get sold to you.
Another key takeaway is the importance of being proactive in your regulatory research and preparedness. The new GRI sustainability indicators that focus on compliance require you to not only comply with current regional regulations, but also to be in compliance with expected upcoming regulations.
Sustainability reporting requirements have evolved since the implementation of the Automotive Sector Supplement. Your team can keep up with all the latest changes with ERA’s Corporate Sustainability Software. Take charge of built-in and custom sustainability metrics and generate reports that align with GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards and other frameworks.
Book a discovery call with one of our project analysts today to find out more.
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