Since the adoption of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) endorsed by United Nations in 2015, which envision an ambitious representation of what the world could look like in the upcoming years, companies have been employing different approaches to identify and report on their contributions to the SDGs, albeit facing various difficulties due to the goals’ novelty, legislative deficiencies, and the complexity of connections between SDGs and business performance. In this context, the relationship between sustainability practices and firms’ financial performance has attracted much attention among researchers. Consequently, this research is focusing on determining to what extent the financial indicators disclosed in the annual reports are impacting the quality of non-financial reporting based on SDGs in the case of chemical companies operating in Central and Eastern European countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia), within the time frame of 2015–2019. To reach our objective, a score-based content analysis was applied to assess the measure of SDGs achievement, and subsequently, the SDG score was used in multiple linear regression models with several financial data-based independent variables. The main findings highlight the companies’ contribution to the SDGs, particularly to those addressing the environment and decent work conditions for employees, and suggest that the research and development costs and other intangibles represent the most influential variable in explaining the variation in the firms’ SDG score. Academics, businesses and legislative bodies may find these results valuable in their corresponding activities: theoretical, pragmatic or statutory.

Considering the negative effect of anthropological activities on climate in recent decades, all countries entailed a universal commitment to fight against climate change by boosting innovation and introducing new technologies. In this context, our paper aimed to investigate the impact of innovation input in terms of research and development (R&D) costs and technology expressed as technical equipment and machinery (TEM) on the reported greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in chemical industry companies in five Central and Eastern European countries. This study employed a panel regression model with fixed effects and covered data from 2015 to 2020. The empirical results emphasize a negative relationship between R&D costs and GHG emissions, indicating the companies’ commitment to developing innovative solutions that contribute to lower destructive emissions. Additionally, the findings related to the influence of TEM on GHG emissions reveal a positive impact, highlighting the need to improve manufacturing technologies. The practical implications of our findings can be meaningful for both policymakers and businesses operating in the chemical industry in developing countries. Policymakers should offer financial incentives to support research and investments in clean technologies, while businesses should prioritise such investments to mitigate GHG emissions.