Sustainability reporting is integral to our year-end reporting and follows GRI guidelines at Roche. Our Annual Report for 2007 comprises a Business Report, which contains our sustainability reporting, and a Finance Report. Both reports cover the same period and group of affiliated companies, and both were submitted to the Board of Directors for final approval.

2007 Business Report

Our reporting enables external parties to assess the sustainability of our activities, highlighting areas where there is still room for improvement as well as our achievements. There is growing interest among our stakeholders and the public at large in this kind of information. Sustainability has been integrated into our business reporting because we do not wish to draw a distinction between sustainability issues and day-to-day operations.


Reporting as a management tool

Our corporate sustainability reports are compiled under the direction of the Corporate Sustainability Committee and verified by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The data and information contained in the reports serve as a guide for reviewing and adjusting our sustainability strategy. They are thus a useful management tool as well as a source of information.

The Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) Sustainability Reporting Guidelines 3.0 (2006) and the European Chemical Industry Council’s (CEFIC) Responsible Care Reporting Guidelines (2006) provide the basis for collecting and presenting data on sustainability. Each year Roche requires Group companies to provide data and information covering 46 indicators of safety, health and environmental performance, including all the indicators required under CEFIC guidelines. Five-year trends are charted for each indicator. Coverage of economic performance data and the social dimensions of sustainability closely follows GRI recommendations.

Key Performance Indicators of the Roche Group (pdf)


External verification of our sustainability part in our the annual report 2007

External verification of sustainability reporting enhances credibility, and more importantly helps ensure the quality of internal reporting systems and of the reports themselves. Our 2007 Business Report includes an independent assurance report on our sustainability reporting for 2007, prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers AG.

Extract from Assurance Report:

‘In our opinion

• the Roche Group internal sustainability reporting guidelines are applied properly at the selected sites;
• the internal SHE reporting system to collect the SHE data is functioning as designed; and
• the social dimension reporting provides an appropriate basis for the disclosure of social dimension information, in all material respects, based on the evaluation criteria.’
   

Previous sustainability reports

Business Report 2006

Business Report 2005

Sustainability Report 2004

Sustainability Report 2003


Roche published separate reports on safety and environmental protection until 2002:

Safety and Environmental Protection at Roche: Group Report 2002

Safety and Environmental Protection at Roche: Group Report 2001

Safety and Environmental Protection at Roche: Group Report 2000