AUS
NZ
UK
CA
USA
FRA
GER
ESP
ITA
NLD
PRT
SWE
GRC
IND
POL
BRA
ZAF
RUS
CHN
UAE
As previously seen on the CSRHub blog.
By Bahar Gidwani
Founded in 2017 and based in Perth, Australia, Sustainable Platform is a SaaS database that provides access to crucial and transparent sustainability & SDG (UN Sustainable Development Goal) performance data for thousands of global companies. We recently brought Sustainable Platform’s data on 23,000 entities into CSRHub’s big data consensus ESG ratings system.
One of Sustainable Platform’s foci is providing feedback on company performance relative to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It also offers metrics on social, environmental, and sustainable technology performance. We were particularly interested in an indicator of an entity’s greenwashing activity.
We have always been concerned that our ratings might be influenced by greenwashing. (Per the UN: “Greenwashing is a deceptive practice where companies make misleading claims about their environmental impact to gain market share.”) Our ratings get input from many stakeholders who could be influenced by a greenwashing company’s deceptions. We hoped that having multiple sources with different perspectives would guard us against greenwashing effects. But we had no good way to check.
We matched Sustainable Platform’s assessment of greenwashing activity to CSRHub’s Overall Rating for 17,138 entities. We were pleased to see an indication that greenwashing seems to have very little direct effect on our ratings.
Greenwashing May Have Only a Small Effect on CSRHub Scores
| Sustainable Platform Greenwashing Risk Level | # of Matched Entities | Average CSRHub Overall Rating * |
|---|---|---|
| Low | 13,596 | 49.5 |
| Moderate | 2,852 | 49.6 |
| High | 690 | 50.0 |
* Average rating for September 2024.
We love to see new ideas—new ways to examine how entities are responding to the demands from their stakeholders for information and better social performance. We will soon release an SDG “calculator”—a way to estimate what an entity’s performance may look like from the perspective of the UN’s SDG system.
We hope to match this to Sustainable Platform’s direct observation of entity SDG performance. We can then both check the quality of our tool and look for places where company reporting to SDGs is not being understood by our ESG ratings community.
Statistical Analysis on Greenwashing Impact
We checked to see if the half-point difference between high-risk and the other levels was significant. We saw a z-score of -1.6 when we compared the means for the moderate and high scores.
This suggests there is about a 95% chance they are different and that the high-score entities do get a small benefit from their greenwashing activity.
About CSRHub
CSRHub offers the most comprehensive global set of Consensus ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) ratings, information, and tools. CSRHub’s business intelligence system measures the ESG business impact that drives corporate and investor sustainability decisions. Founded in 2007, CSRHub covers 57,528 public and private companies, and provides ESG performance scores on over 38,833 companies from 134 industries in 156 countries. Our Big Data platform uses algorithms to aggregate, normalize and weight ESG metrics from 967 sources to produce a strong consensus signal on corporate sustainability performance. Interested in learning more about CSRHub? Click here.
About Sustainable Platform
Sustainable Platform provides independent sustainability data and metrics on public and private companies to institutional investors and insurance companies globally. Since 2017, SP has offered asset owners and managers—with over $20 trillion under management—up-to-date sustainability data through its proprietary software and analytics. SP’s platform delivers unique, scientifically driven ways to measure risks, enhance portfolios, and independently verify if companies and funds align with their policies and mandates.
