ESG News Review 17 — 23 August 2013

Staples Inc. was the most praised company last week after announcing that it recycled 350 million ink and toner cartridges since 2005. Another retailer, Wal-Mart, also received mostly positive coverage for its “made-in-America” campaign promoting the creation of more manufacturing jobs in the United States.

On the negative side, Tokyo Electric Power Co. was the most criticized company, as radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant continued to leak into the Pacific ocean. JPMorgan Chase also received criticism as it is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for hiring children of Chinese politicians to expand business.

The most praised companies last week were: Staples Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Dollar General Corporation, and First Solar, Inc.

And the most criticized were: Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Microsoft Corporation, Eli Lilly & Co., and Google Inc.

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

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.

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 %

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 USA, China, Japan, South Africa, UK, Germany, Australia, and Spain were the major countries of action last week.

Last week statistics

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 17 – 23 August 2013.

Historical statistics

Positives	339030
Negatives	193156
Total	532186
Sources	34957
Start	01.01.2002
End	23.08.2013

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