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Newsweek Green Rankings 2009 assesses America's largest companies for their environmental impacts through resource use and emissions, their policies and strategies, and their reputation among peers. The 500 companies included in the ranking were chosen according to their revenue, market capitalization and number of employees.
Trucost, with its comprehensive data on corporate environmental impacts, is a key partner to Newsweek in helping unlock the most significant problem in creating a definitive environmental scorecard: the lack of corporate reporting of even the most basic environmental data. Trucost's comprehensive approach allows it to evaluate the environmental impacts of a company whether a company reports its emissions or not, and even when the company itself does not know what its impacts are.
In creating the first ever definitive environmental scorecard for the biggest companies in the U.S., Newsweek has taken on a challenging task.
Newsweek's Approach
The 500 companies included in the ranking were chosen by revenue, their market capitalization and number of employees.
To generate a meaningful ranking in a framework of poor disclosure, Newsweek collaborated with three expert, independent research partners on this first-ever environmental ranking of major U.S. companies:
The goal was to assess each company's resource use and emissions, environmental policies and strategies, and reputation among its peers.
Each of the three Newsweek partners scored the companies in the Green Rankings according to their own methodologies, and then converted their results to Z-scores, a statistical technique that measures how well a firm compares to the average score of the collective group. The overall Newsweek Green Score was calculated as the weighted sum of the three component Z-scores: 45% for environmental impact, 45% for green policies, and 10% for the reputation score.
| Index name | Description | Contributor | Weight in Green Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Environmental Impact Score | A comprehensive and standardized quantitative performance measurement that captures the total cost of over 700 environmental impacts of a corporation's global operations; the score is normalized against a company's annual revenues to enable comparisons across companies of different size | Trucost | 45% |
| Green Policies Score | Based on an analytical assessment of a company's environmental policies, covering best-in-class policies, programs and initiatives, as well as regulatory infractions, lawsuits and community impacts | KLD | 45% |
| Reputation Score | This score is based on a reputational survey of corporate social responsibility (CSR) professionals, academics and other environmental experts who subscribe to CorporateRegister.com. CEOs or high-ranking officials in all companies on the Newsweek 500 list were also invited to participate | Corporate Register | 10% |
Newsweek's methodology and weightings were created in consultation with its three partners on the project and an independent advisory panel. See Newsweek's Green Ranking 2009 results - go to www.trucost.com and click on the Newsweek Green Rankings box.
Want to know how Trucost's approach works?
To view the full ranking, visit greenrankings.newsweek.com