About This Report

Westfield Group’s Corporate Sustainability Report has been prepared in accordance with the guidelines of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 Framework and is targeting a GRI C level rating. 

The report covers the Group’s performance across a number of key indicators during 2011, and should provide a comparison for the baseline year of sustainability reporting as well as a benchmark for Westfield’s ongoing sustainable performance and practices. 

In this second sustainability report, the Group has continued its internal reviews to identify material issues within the business, using both 2010’s reporting framework as well as newly identified performance indicators to demonstrate the current practices, business priorities and areas for potential improvement. 

Increasingly Westfield reports on its sustainable practices through other company documents, regulatory requirements and voluntary reporting submissions. In 2011 these included the Group’s ongoing participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project, its inaugural participation in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) and its Annual Report.

Scope

The scope of this year’s report includes Westfield’s physical assets in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom - including shopping centres, office buildings, and construction and development sites. It does not include assets in which Westfield has financial interests, but does not actively manage. It also excludes Westfield’s interests in Brazil, which were acquired during 2011. Those interests, which comprise a 50% joint venture partnership over five properties in the state of Santa Catarina, do not include direct operational control.

The GRI Framework provides a range of topics which companies can consider when reviewing their sustainability performance. The topics are listed as individual indicators in the GRI framework, and in selecting those indicators a company nominates the level at which it will report on its sustainability performance. For the 2012 report Westfield has selected 16 key performance indicators against which to report - in some instances partially, and in most cases, in full. The Group has prepared a C level report as defined by the GRI. 

The reported performance indicators are spread across sustainability categories that relate to the company’s impact on the environment, its economic performance, and social factors which include labour practices and its role in the community. In this year’s report, the environmental indicators have been expanded to include water and waste management in addition to the measurement of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption; workplace factors like the rates of injury, life safety and absenteeism are joined by [diversity considerations, employee turnover rates and levels of staff training; and detailed information on the level of engagement Westfield has with its communities. The report also includes the Group’s economic performance in relation to the impact it has on the community and the ‘flow of capital between stakeholders’ as described by the GRI guidelines. 

Materiality 

In 2012 the Group has continued to engage with internal stakeholders to determine the issues considered the most material and of highest priority to the business. While using 2011 outcomes of consultation with staff at all levels of Westfield as a baseline, the Group has been able to expand on the performance indicators which were deemed material to the business. Ongoing engagement with the Corporate Social Responsibility Working Groups in each of Westfield’s operating countries has ensured that the topics already identified are still deemed material, and has also allowed for new performance indicators to be identified and reported.  

Even allowing for regional differences in reporting priorities, there were more commonalities between the markets than not, reflecting consistent business practices across the Group’s four operation regions covered in this report. 

Accordingly, the performance indicators included in the 2012 Sustainability Report represent an accurate picture of Westfield’s most pressing priorities for minimising its environmental impact.  

As the Group’s understanding of its own sustainable performance grows, the engagement on the report can continue to broaden to include industry groups, government and non-government organisations, the investment community, and so on.

Westfield London