Methodologically, How Does This Work?
The Problem With Most Sustainability Ratings
Most tools that rate companies on sustainability are measuring the wrong thing.
They track what companies do. These include: emissions output, water usage, supply chain audits. Those things matter. But they miss whether companies are being honest about what those numbers actually mean.
A company can have a robust recycling program and still bury the part where its absolute emissions went up 34% since it made its biggest climate pledge. A company can have third-party auditors sign off on a report while keeping the most damaging data in a separate document that its own marketing team never mentions.
That's not a performance problem. That's a communication problem. And almost no one is measuring it.
What Does It Measure?
The ECTF scores companies on one specific question: does how a company talks about its sustainability efforts match what its own data shows?
Not whether the company is green. Whether it's honest.
I built it across eleven indicators in two categories:
Part A (Greenwashing Risk). This is the qualitative part. This looks at the language companies use. Is it vague? Do the bold claims on Instagram trace back to anything in the actual report? Are they talking mostly about future goals while quietly burying current performance?
Part B (Credibility Gap). This is the quantitative part. This looks at whether the numbers add up. Are emissions actually going down, or just being measured differently? Is the net zero claim backed by real offsets or is it a promise buried in fine print for 2050?
Each indicator scores 0, 1, or 2. The scores add up to a composite out of 22. The higher the score, the more communicative failure the framework detected, and the more “present” each indicator is found.
What I looked at for every company
Before scoring anything, I assembled the same evidence set for each company:
Their most recent sustainability or ESG report
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Their own website and social media being Instagram, LinkedIn, the consumer-facing sustainability pages
Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) database records, an independent body that validates whether a company's climate targets are actually aligned with science
Net zero trackers and carbon disclosure records from third parties
Any regulatory findings, ad bans, or legal proceedings in the public record