Global business rating system announced

Gil Friend

Consultant Gil Friend has partnered with Future 500 and California’s Alameda County for an ambitious plan: to rate "sustainable" businesses the world over.

Announced last week at San Francisco’s World Environment Day, the Sustainable Business Rating System (SBRS) is still in its infancy. Friend said he and other partners have merely gathered a handful of possible metrics.

Alameda County’s Waste Management Authority, which for 15 years has worked with dozens of regional companies to reduce waste, has bankrolled a pilot of the rating certification.

At the announcement, partners said the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard in the green building industry inspired the model, and that they have reviewed metrics from both the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as well as the Global Reporting Initiative, or GRI.

Friend said he envisions a system universal for both public and private companies, but flexible enough to accurately measure and document industry-specific actions. Developers want the rating system to influence consumer buying with some type of iconic label. To verify companies’ claims, SBRS will also try to incorporate reputation ratings similar to those on E-Bay.

Spectators at the announcement expressed enthusiasm for the reputation ratings and also warned Friend and partners to make the rating system transparent and affordable for the smallest companies.

Rory Bakke of Alameda County said studies show 80 percent of corporate executives believe corporate citizenship does help the bottom line — for example, by reducing waste and toxic inputs.

But Friend said no company in the world has pursued enough innovation to make it “anywhere near” sustainable.

Along with the SBRS, Gil’s Berkeley, Calif.-based company, Natural Logic, has a three-step leadership strategy for companies: a policy statement of intent, a program for implementation, and performance metrics.

“We’re trying to focus on the performance aspect,” he said. “Zero waste is not enough, and we can’t get at sustainability by climbing the ladder from the bottom. We’ve got to move companies to do better than the best efforts now out there.”

Friend said the next step is stakeholder meetings and perhaps a pilot with Alameda County companies.

“We realize we can’t be national or international tomorrow,” he said. “We’re still in a phase of getting big, broad collective wisdom to do this right.”

Also at World Environment Day, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2010. The goal is slightly less rigorous than cuts called for in the international Kyoto Treaty, which the Bush administration has rejected. Auto emission standards set to take effect in California in 2009 were mentioned by Schwarzenegger as one way to help reach the goal.