ESG News Review 29 June – 5 July 2013

Last week The Coca-Cola Company has received positive media coverage for joining the Soft Drinks Sustainability Roadmap, an initiative aiming at reducing the environmental footprint of soft drink products. At the same time, Google was criticized by Oklahoma and Nebraska’s Attorney’s General for making money from YouTube ads promoting illegal drugs.

This weekly review has been produced using the EthicalQuote reputation index run by Covalence, which tracks 2800 companies worldwide. It gives a summary of positive and negative news published last week about Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), ethics and sustainability.

Last week 381 companies were mentioned in 3013 news pieces gathered by our team. 241 companies had more positive than negative news, while 125 registered a majority of negatives, and 15 were balanced.

The most praised companies last week were: The Coca-Cola Company, General Motors, Volkswagen AG, General Electric Co., Honda Motor Co. Ltd.

And the most criticized were: Google Inc., Mead Johnson Nutrition Company, GlaxoSmithKline plc, HSBC Holdings plc, Abbott Laboratories.

The tag cloud below shows words found in news about these companies.

Words found in news about most praised and most criticized companies last week

The EthicalQuote reputation index integrates thousands of news pieces gathered online and classified according to 50 ESG criteria inspired by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and to their positive or negative sentiment.

The next heatmap represents the sentiment calculated for each of the 50 criteria last week. The 50 criteria are embedded into 7 groups, following the structure of the GRI. The color indicates the ratio of positive news / total news.

Ratio of positive news / total news for 50 criteria last week 0 % 100 %

Last week the Society criteria group had the most hits on both positive (Local Communities, Awards, Reports and Comments) and negative side (Corruption, Competition, Social Compliance).

The following criteria groups received strong majorities of positives: Governance (Commitments to External Initiatives), Environment (Energy, Environmental Impacts of Products, Emissions, Environmental Compliance, Environmental Impact of Transport), and Economic (Social Sponsorship, Indirect Economic Impacts).

The map below represents countries where action described in the news takes place, the color reflecting the ratio of positive news / total news for each active country using last week’s data.

Ratio of positive news / total news 0 % 100 %

In terms of volume of information China, France, USA, UK, Australia, Canada, India, and Mexico were the major countries of action last week.

Last week statistics

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 29 June – 5 July 2013.

Historical statistics

Positives	333031
Negatives	184975
Total	518006
Sources	34499
Start	01.01.2002
End	05.07.2013

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