Gem of the day

Toby Webb has a great post today about the absurdity of what he refers to as 'fake green rankings' (I've previously dubbed them 'unintentional greenwash'). The occasion? The latest useless exercise in ranking companies across industries on their sustainability performance, courtesy of Newsweek: The Green Rankings.

As Toby points out, Total Energy (if anyone needs a refresher on how Total communicates on climate and energy, here you go) somehow manages to place higher on the list than Unilever. Then there's the issue of comparing companies across industries--which means that, FYI as usual, FMCG companies don't tend to do as well as their service industry counterparts.

My personal vitriol towards Newsweek and everything it stands for aside, let's take a moment and examine the goal of this ranking in their own words:

"Our goal was to cut through the green chatter and quantify the actual environmental footprints, policies, and reputations of these big businesses. To do this, we teamed up with three leading environmental research organizations to create the most comprehensive rankings available."

First of all, I love the idea of a ranking cutting through 'the green chatter' by identifying itself as....Green. But the real gem is delivered in the methodology behind these 'green scores':


"This score is derived from three component scores: the Environmental Impact Score (EIS), the Green Policies Score (GPS), and the Reputation Survey Score (RSS), weighted at 45 percent, 45 percent, and 10 percent, respectively."

So regardless of your actual environmental policies and initiatives as a company, you can still get 10% for how the public perceives you? I can already hear the communications team at ExxonMobil getting out their credit cards...

And now for the final gem: BP comes in at the magical place of #92. Harken, corporate sustainability! It's here.