From 2002 to mid-2013, the Roberts Environmental Center had been analyzing the corporate sustainability reports of the world’s largest corporations under the leadership of Professor J. Emil Morhardt. The Pacific Sustainability Index (PSI) uses two systematic questionnaires to analyze the quality of the sustainability reporting — a base questionnaire for reports across sectors and a sector-specific questionnaire for companies within the same sector.

The selection of questions was based on and periodically adjusted to the most frequently-mentioned topics in over 900 corporate sustainability reports analyzed from 2002 through 2007 at the Roberts Environmental Center. The philosophy of the PSI is described in detail in our book, Clean, Green, and Read All Over, which can be purchased here. The selection of PSI topics was constantly adapted to include topics discussed in the world’s best sustainability reports, raising the bar for better sustainability reporting in the future.

We also encourage all of our readers to contact us for consultation on better sustainability reporting or for recruiting our student analysts who often look for corporate summer internships and post-graduation positions in environmental education or environmental communications.

A two-minute video was created in 2006 by our own Joseph Russell ’06 introducing the PSI research:

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Methodology

Our analysts downloaded relevant English web pages from the main corporate websites for analysis. Our scoring excluded data independently stored outside the main corporate web site. When a corporate subsidiary had its own sustainability reporting, partial credit was given to the parent company when a direct link was provided in the main corporate web site. Our analysts filled out a PSI scoring sheet and tracked the coverage and depths of different sustainability issues mentioned in all online materials.

Scores and ranks

When they were finished scoring, the analysts entered their scoring results into the PSI database. The PSI database calculated scores and published them on the Center’s website. The sector reports below provide an in-depth analysis on sustainability reporting of the largest, but not more than 30, companies of the sector, as listed in the latest Fortune Global 500 and 1000 lists. Prior to publishing our sector reports, we notified and encouraged companies analyzed to provide feedback and additional new online materials, which often improved their scores.