Award-winning sustainability reports

Berlin, 3 March 2008: Corporate Register, the largest online database in the world for corporate CR, sustainability and environmental reports presents the winners of the new Online Reporting Awards. Of the 300 reports rated by the global CR Community via online voting, the Volkswagen AG sustainability report ranked seventh in the overall assessment, making Volkswagen Germany's leading company for sustainability reports.

Well-received initiative
In August 2007, the Corporate Register invited around 2,000 companies to enter their reports in the competition. By the closing date in September, 300 companies from 40 countries and 39 sectors had submitted their reports for assessment. The high level of interest is a good indication of how CR and sustainability reports have increased in significance all over the world. In light of this success, the Corporate Register plans to make the awards an annual event.

A winning procedure
The online jury of around 20,000 registered readers of CR and sustainability reports were given free access to all publications. Each member had a total of 5 votes (first, second, third etc.) within nine categories. The jury members were able to review and change their ratings at any point during the course of the process until the evaluation of the results was commenced in January. This highly effective procedure combined with the jury prize of £5000 guaranteed high quality, reliable ratings. The members of the jury could also send in comments on the individual reports, which were then forwarded directly to the relevant companies.

Contributing to improvements in reporting processes
The awards have helped to establish a level of comparability between reports all over the world, which in turn is expected to improve the quality of reports in the future. Dr. Christiane von Finckenstein, responsible for creating the Volkswagen sustainability report, made the following comment on the quality of the report: "The positive rating spurs us on in our work on future reports. This not only applies to external communication, but also to the extensive research within the company and our subsidiary firms which has sensitized our employees to the social and ecological challenges faced by our company. We firmly believe that a good report makes a significant contribution to sustainable development."