Last September, Newsweek launched its first “Green Rankings” of the largest U.S. firms:
“For more than a year, the magazine worked with leading environmental researchers KLD Research & Analytics, Trucost, and CorporateRegister.com to rank the 500 largest U.S. companies based on their actual environmental performance, policies, and reputation.”
Given the research support Newsweek assembled to compile the rankings, there is a good chance these data represent a meaningful effort to evaluate actual sustainability performance, rather than greenwash:
“Ranking companies based on sustainability is a huge challenge. That's largely because comparing environmental performance across industries is a bit like analyzing whether Tiger Woods or LeBron James is the world's greatest athlete—there's an inevitable apples-and-oranges element.”
The methodology used to compile the rankings, with three components (a firm’s environmental impact score, its green policies score, and its reputation score) is explained on the Newsweek website (http://www.newsweek.com/id/215522). It will be interesting to see how these rankings evolve and whether they can make more of a mark than the multitude of other attempts to measure firms’ CSR or sustainability profiles.
Take care
David
Bill Werther & David Chandler
Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility
© Sage Publications, 2006
http://www.sagepub.com/Werther/
The Greenest Big Companies in America
By Daniel McGinn
NEWSWEEK
Published Sep 21, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Sep 28, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/215577
