Glossary
ASA
Advertising Standards Authority. The UK's independent advertising regulator. An ASA ruling against a sustainability claim means a company ran an ad that was formally found to be misleading. Relevant to Unilever's Persil finding.
Carbon Offsetting
A company compensates for its emissions by funding projects that absorb or reduce carbon elsewhere such as tree planting, renewable energy projects. Heavily criticized for allowing companies to claim neutrality without reducing actual emissions.
CDP
Carbon Disclosure Project is a nonprofit running a global environmental disclosure system. Companies receive letter grades.
Communicative Integrity
The degree to which a company's public sustainability communications accurately and completely reflect what its own data shows. This is the specific variable the ECTF was built to measure.
ECTF
ESG Communicative Transparency Framework. The original scoring methodology developed for this project. It evaluates whether the way a company communicates about its sustainability efforts matches what its own data actually shows across eleven indicators in two categories: greenwashing risk and credibility gap.
ESRS
European Sustainability Reporting Standards. Mandatory sustainability disclosure requirements for large companies operating in the EU. Unilever must comply. US companies do not.
GHG Protocol
Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The global standard framework that companies use to measure and report emissions. ExxonMobil proposed replacing it with its own methodology.
Material Controversy
A legal, regulatory, or publicly documented finding significant enough that stakeholders would consider it relevant to their understanding of a company. The ECTF flags companies that omit material controversies from sustainability communications.
Net Zero
A commitment to balance the amount of greenhouse gases (emissions) emitted with the amount removed. Frequently claimed yet rarely defined with specificity.
Scope 1
Greenhouse gases a company releases directly from sources it owns or controls. A factory's own emissions and a company's vehicle fleet.
Scope 2
Emissions from the electricity a company purchases and uses. Indirect, but directly tied to energy choices.
Scope 3
Indirect emissions across a company's entire value chain being suppliers, shipping, product use, and disposal. This is usually the largest category.
SBTi
Science Based Targets initiative. This is an independent body that validates whether a company's climate targets align with climate science.
TCFD
Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. This is a framework for reporting how climate change affects a company financially.