How Environmentally Friendly is Your Favorite Company?
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 06.12.07
Not content to simply rest on his laurels as one of the most environmentally-friendly CEOs out there, Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirshberg wants to shed more light on his and other companies' environmental practices and has created a new group called Climate Counts that will be scoring prominent companies based on their response to climate change.
"Are companies measuring their impact on climate? Are they reducing, are they disclosing their efforts," said Hirshberg. "And finally, are they supporting or are they blocking progressive legislation to reduce our climate footprint as a country?"
The organization scores companies on a scale of 1 to 100 and has so far focused on popular fast-food chains. The results so far? Lackluster, to say the least: while McDonald's scored highest with a paltry 22, the three other chains that were judged, Burger King, Wendy's and Yum Brands (owner of Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) scored a nice round zero. "None of the other companies in the sector have even taken the first step to measure their climate footprint," said Wood Turner, Climate Counts' project director.
McDonald's middling score, which Turner deemed "not good," was the result of the company's attempts at experimenting with biofuels and green building. While a McDonald's spokesperson said the company welcomed the scrutiny, Yum Brands refused to comment and Burger King and Wendy's insisted they were making an effort to take on global warming with energy efficiency measures. Wendy's Denny Lynch noted that, "Early results are showing we're decreasing the amount of usage . . . energy usage by 10 percent."
Despite the negative press this might earn some of the companies, John Owens, an analyst with Morningstar, doubts that fast food's audience - mainly young males - will really care. "By and large I would say that fast-food customers probably aren't as engaged on this issue. And I mean, maybe they're getting more news about what Paris Hilton's doing rather than what's going on with global climate change," he remarked.
Climate Counts is planning on scoring more companies next week, including Apple, Starbucks and Coca-Cola. To those who believe the rating system may be biased in favor of companies like Hirshberg's, take heed: Stonyfield Farm, which will also be rated next week, apparently only ranked "in the upper tier" and received a less than satisfactory score, according to Hirshberg.
You can listen to the entire story on American Public Media's Marketplace website here.
Via ::Climate score: McDonald's 'not good' but winning, ::Climate Counts Official Website
See also: ::Inc.com's "Green 50" Companies List, ::Dannon Removes Plastic Overcaps, Smart Move, ::domino & TreeHugger's Green List: Food, ::(Fast Food) Restaurant of the Week: O’Natural’s, ME & MA
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Who Are the Greentronic Companies? Check the Scoreboard.
- Reduce your Carbon Footprint by Learning to Roller Skate
- International Environmental Court of Justice Proposed by British Lawyer
- Tropical Forests Better Left Intact As Carbon Sinks Than Converted to Biofuel Plantations
The weakness of most such scoring systems is that they are based on "trailing indicators": stuff reported in the public domain without direct interaction. There is usually no differentiation between what they did and what the are doing and what they plan to do. And only the very best give recognition to sufficiency of management systems, especially the third party auditing of these. As a result, ten different approaches give ten often radically different rankings of the same companies. At some point, companies begin to notice this, figure out that its not worth the bother being ranked by organizations with little or no corporate insights, notice also that the bad rankings are getting stockholder attention, and start to say "NO" to all comers. That's about where we are at this point.
I like online work. I believe that telecommuting is an obvous 'GREEN' choice. I recently lost my job. Finding myself at losse ends I started looking for work with the resources I had.
I found a few part time jobs online. The more I looked into it however, the more I began to see advantages to working online.
I went from a 25 mile commute to work to 0.
My gas emmissions have been reduced considerably.
I stay at home more and I have the freedom to garden more. This saves me money and helps me to contribute to a healthy community.
I save time on my commute (10 hours a week) which allows me to volunteer as a grant writer/ researcher for my favorite non profit.
Who knows maybe I will be able to do this full time one day. Until then I am so glad I came across
sites like href="http://www.payperpost.com">ads on blogs .
No kidding! I truely believe that GREEN is the only choice. I am just lucky that a day of surfing the web became a green option for me.
I wish there was a way to create a green non profit on the web that would truely give treehuggers a way to create green non profts virtually and exchange services.
A virtual non profit marketplace for the people who wanna heal the damage not contribute to it.
I saw that Social Venture Network is holding a contest to award socially responsible business leaders and help them further their endeavors! You can get all the rules and background here: www.svn.org/imaginewhatsnext. Maybe some of you will qualify!