Through formulating the Sustainability Report, we review the sustainability performance of DSD during the year and explore the opportunities for development.
Report Profile
As part of our commitment to promoting sustainable development, the Drainage Services Department (DSD) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) [1] published the first Sustainability Report in 2012-13. This year, we continue to publish our Sustainability Report which is titled Treasure Our Home (the Report) to elaborate our achievement and performance in economic, environmental and social aspects in the fiscal year 2013-14 (1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014). The Report serves as an important communication tool for our stakeholders to better understand our sustainability performance.
The Report was prepared in accordance with the Comprehensive Requirements of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G4 Guidelines. Independent third-party assurance has been conducted to verify the materiality, credibility and reliability of the Report and to ensure its attainment to the reporting requirements.
The Report is available in online web-based HTML, PDF and text-only versions with three types of characters (English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese). Hard copy of the Report’s Executive Summary is also available.
We welcome and value your feedback on the Report and its approach, and our sustainability performance. To help us to make continuous improvement, please complete and return the questionnaire contained in Chapter 13 Feedback Form.
Reporting Scope and Boundary
Compared with GRI G3.1 Guidelines adopted last year, the GRI G4 guidelines put much emphasis on materiality, and encourage organisations to report information that is critical and of concern to their operations and stakeholders. In response to this, we have gone through a well-structured and rigorous stakeholder engagement exercise to collect views from our following major stakeholders through focus group meetings and/or surveys [2]:
During the engagement process, stakeholders were asked to prioritise and evaluate the importance of DSD’s sustainability issues and performance in order to identify the Material Aspects which should be covered in the Report. [3]
The Material Aspects and their corresponding boundaries have been identified as follows:[4]
| Category | Material Aspect[5] | Boundaries[6] | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Operations of DSD | Operations of Our Major Consultants and Contractors | ||
| Environment | Ecological Conservation | ✔ | ✔ |
| Energy Management | ✔ | ||
| Effluents and Waste Treatment | ✔ | ✔ | |
| Odour Management | ✔ | ||
| Water Resources Management | ✔ | ||
| Use of Materials | ✔ | ||
| Transport | ✔ | ||
| Economic | Financial Performance | ✔ | |
| Indirect Economic Impacts | ✔ | ||
| Procurement Practices | ✔ | ||
| Social | Results of Survey Measuring Customer Satisfaction | ✔ | |
| Occupational Health & Safety[8] | ✔ | ||
The Report covers the Material Aspects arising from DSD’s offices and sewage treatment facilities in Hong Kong, and the work of our major consultants and contractors that we have influence on.[7] DSD aims at providing data and information to the best of our knowledge, however we rely on relevant parties to provide some of the data and information that are out of our direct control.
[1] G4-17
[2] G4-18
[3] G4-18
[4] G4-19, G4-27
[5] G4-20, G4-21
[6] G4-17
[7] G4-17
[8] Although occupational health and safety issues arising from DSD’s operations are not identified by stakeholder groups as material, DSD puts safety as top priority for our staff, consultants and contractors. For more information, please refer to Chapter 8 and Chapter 10.
