Double Materiality: this concept describes how corporate information can be important for both, implications for a firm’s financial value (i.e. financial materiality), and a firm’s impact on the world at large (i.e. impact materiality).
The idea of double materiality comes from a recognition that a company’s impact on the world beyond financial can be material, and therefore worth disclosing, for reasons other than the effect on a firm’s bottom line.
<aside> 💡 A sustainability topic/information meets the criteria of double materiality if it is either material from the impact perspective, the financial perspective or both of these two perspectives.
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Apiday has defined and scored a list of sustainability issues for several industries.
The following steps were taken to assess the material sustainability issues per industry.
Apiday’s list of industries (and definitions) is based on the EU NACE Code, a widely used industry classification.
As of early January 2023, Apiday’s list of industries included 53 industries, from which new ones can be added as needed (e.g. FinTech, TravelTech, etc.).
As of September 2023, Apiday’s proprietary list of sustainability issues includes 21 topics (from climate change to health and safety and business ethics).
This list of sustainability issues was developed based on topics highlighted in several ESG frameworks and regulations (GRI, B Corp, Ecovadis, SASB, MSCI as well as CSRD and SFDR).
Some sustainability issues are industry-agnostic (e.g. climate change, human capital development), while others are specific to an industry (e.g. animal welfare).