AN APPLICATION ON ENVIROMENTAL PERFORMANCE OF RETAIL TRADING AND FOOD MANUFACTURING COMPANIES WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING

Abstract

Purpose-The purpose of the research is to examine the sustainability reports of retail trade and food manufacturing companies and to evaluate the environmental performances of the companies in the sustainability reports within the framework of the criteria published by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). In this study, retail trade and food manufacturing companies were examined considering the environmental importance of the sector, the intensity of legal regulations regulating the sector's relationship with the environment, the professional perspective of the sector on sustainability reports, and the increasing awareness of the employees in the sector.. Retail trade and food manufacturing companies, which are in the top 5 in terms of net sales in the 2021 Fortune 500 list for Turkiye, were included in the evaluation due to the fact that the published sustainability reports contain intensive information and there is a time limit for the study. It is aimed to rank the companies under consideration in terms of environmental performance within the scope of their sustainability reports for 2020 and 2021. Methodology- The environmental performance of companies was evaluated through multi-dimensional decision-making techniques such as AHP and TOPSIS. Findings This paper has revealed changes in the rankings of companies in environmental and economic performance evaluation. The best environmental performance based on the results of the calculation is the ULKER Bisküvi San.Tic.A.Ş. the lowest company Anadolu Efes Biracılık ve Malt San. A.Ş. Conclusion- Sustainability performance gains importance as an important indicator for companies.It is thought that the results obtained in this study will be beneficial to other companies operating in the retail trade and food manufacturing sector but have not published a sustainability report, and to companies planning to prepare a sustainability report. Transparent and detailed preparation of sustainability reports is one of the issues to be considered for performance measurement. Keywords: Logistics management, sustainability reporting, environmental performance, AHP,TOPSIS. JEL Codes: M40, M41