The good news: U.S. companies do far better than their global peers when it comes to having business ethics policies. The bad news: that is one of the only areas where they don't fall far behind in sustainability practices and transparency.

On July 27, The Conference Board, in collaboration with Bloomberg and the non-profit Global Reporting Initiative, released Sustainability Practices: 2012 Edition. The report includes benchmarking data on 3,000 U.S. and non-U.S. corporations regarding their environmental and social practices. Among the topics covered: atmospheric emissions, water consumption, biodiversity policies, labor standards, human rights practices, and charitable and political contributions.

The study found that U.S. corporations consistently fall behind those in other developed economies — notably the European Union and Japan — in transparency of environmental and social practices. The overall disclosure rate of this type of information by U.S. companies in the Russell 1000 is 10 percent, compared to 19 percent for the global sample of corporations that were tracked

Among the findings detailed in the study:

Only 16 percent of U.S.-based Russell 1000 companies were found to have established risk management procedures designed to mitigate their impact on climate change. Globally, formal climate change policies have been adopted by 39 percent of companies.

Only 10 percent of the 3000 companies studied publish their annual employee turnover rate. This could be important, the report says, because a high turnover rate can be symptomatic of employee dissatisfaction or the presence of unsafe and unhealthy working conditions. Among U.S. companies, only 7 percent in the S&P 500 and 4 percent of the Russell 1000 offered up such data.

Only 2 percent of companies in the global sample reported the percentage of minorities in management positions, compared to 5 percent of the S&P 500 and 3 percent of the Russell 1000.

Although there is no securities law requirement to adopt it, most U.S. public companies have an internal written code of ethics that complies with NYSE and NASDAQ standards for listed organizations. Eighty-six percent of U.S. companies in the Russell 1000 (and as many as 93 percent of the larger U.S. companies in the S&P 500) reported having a business ethics policy. Thhis is the one of the few sustainability practices detailed in the report for which U.S. business corporations outperform the global sample (80 percent).

Only 13 percent of U.S. companies in the S&P 500 reported the total dollar value of corporate donations to political groups, parties or individuals, compared to 7 percent of the Russell 1000.

Although 59 percent of companies in the global sample have adopted a health & safety policy (52 percent of U.S. companies in the S&P 500, 35 percent among those in the Russell 1000), it is rarely supplemented with quantitative data on employee accidents and fatalities. Only 2 percent of Russell 1000 U.S. companies detailed the number of workplace accidents, compared to 12 percent of companies in the global index.

Energy and water consumption is largely undisclosed in the U.S. Only 13 percent of the companies in the Russell 1000 have a process in place to measure and report on the consumption of energy across their activities, compared to 47 percent of global companies. Only 12 percent of companies in the Russell 1000, compared to 37 percent in the global sample offered water consumption disclosures.

The adoption of a waste reduction policy is common, even in the U.S., but most do not document the total waste they generate. Almost one third of U.S. companies in the Russell 1000 had a policy in place, but only 10 percent calculated and reported on the total amount of hazardous and non-hazardous waste they disposed of. In the global sample, the percentage was nearly four times as high, 37 percent.