Upgrading waste management and sustainability reporting in banking industry: Evidence from Serbia

Abstract

This paper examines banking industry practice in the area of circular economy reporting with the specific emphasis on waste management reporting in this sector. Paper answers the basic questionis financial service sector exempt from the circular economy reporting requirements having low material usage and resource consumption? Manuscript indicates that in Serbia waste management reporting in banks is in the early stage. Most of the waste management indicators in banks are included as integral part of sustainability reports or as part of management report. Paper indicates that less than half of the bank population in Serbia prepares standard report required by the Environmental Protection Agency. Having in mind these results, banks managers and state officials should take into consideration the fact that most of the banks do not report on flow of waste and most of these indicators are not regularly published on website implying that stakeholders and investors are not adequately informed on the inclusion of banks into circular economy environment. Lagging behind waste management requirements could be potentially hazardous having in mind the fact that Serbia strives towards European Union membership where the legislation and practical alignment with the EU regulation is inevitable process.

Learn, Unlearn and Relearn – Insights From Corporate E-Waste Reporting Literature and Guidelines

“…The previous section has analysed the literature on corporate e-waste reporting and the guidelines available for organisations to report on their e-waste information. Despite the significant impact e-waste has on the environment and to human health, the level of its reporting among business organisations is low (Abd-Mutalib et al, 2021;Adler et al, 2021;Knežević et al, 2018). In a similar vein, there has been a dearth of literature examining corporate e-waste reporting.…”

“…The table reports on the sample used for each research, how the authors measured waste (or e-waste) and the brief findings. The majority of these studies are country-specific with three studies on Malaysia (Abd-Mutalib et al, 2021;Selahudin et al, 2021;Nik Azman & Mohd Salleh, 2020) and one study each on India (Adler et al, 2021), South Africa (Kirchner, 2021), the US (Benjamin et al, 2020) and Serbia (Knežević et al, 2018). The other three studies involved international comparison, including one which focused on companies operating in the electricity sector (Gull et al, in press;Gull et al, 2022;Maia et al, 2021).…”

“…Several aspects of waste (or e-waste) reporting had been used in the literature as a proxy of its measurement. These include total waste generated (Gull et al, in press;Gull et al, 2022;Maia et al, 2021;Benjamin et al, 2020), waste recycling ratio (Gull et al, in press;Gull et al, 2022), waste reduction score (Selahudin et al, 2021;Nik Azman & Mohd Salleh, 2020), the publication of waste management report (Knežević et al, 2018) 2021) had incorporated one item on e-waste, i.e., existence of an e-waste management policy.…”

“…Analysis of the findings reveal that non-hazardous waste represented the large proportion of waste generated (Maia et al, 2021) and sending to landfills was the dominant approach of disposal, other than reusing and recycling (Kirchner, 2021;Maia et al, 2021). In terms of reporting practice, although there was an increasing trend of disclosure (Adler et al, 2021;Knežević et al, 2018), the extent and/or quality was still low (Abd-Mutalib et al, 2021;Adler et al, 2021;Knežević et al, 2018) and less likely to go beyond information relevant to the government (Knežević et al, 2018). Significant determinants of waste (or ewaste) reporting include board gender diversity (Gull et al, in press), firm size (Abd-Mutalib et al, 2021) and CEO duality (Selahudin et al, 2021).…”

Analysis of the efficiency of banks in Serbia and Montenegro using the DEA method

“…In modern business conditions, it is emphasized that well-functioning financial markets and banking institutions are usually considered to be a condition favorable to economic growth [4]. In its business, each banking institution has its own business principles, and one of the keys to a financially sustainable business is the principle of efficiency [5] [ 6]. The ranking of banks is of vital importance if it is taken into account that the banking sector plays a significant role in the economic development of countries and business improvement [7], on the one hand, and that today's financial world is very complex compared to that of from one generation ago [8].…”