Thanks to Ethan at Hooze for turning me on to this one: A new nonprofit called Climate Counts aims to fight global warming by helping consumers find out how seriously different companies take climate change, so that people can boycott or buycott them as they wish.
“When consumers take action and raise their voices on issues
that matter to them, businesses pay attention,” the site states. “Working together, consumers and companies can raise awareness, change
behavior, and move markets to promote environmentally and economically
sound solutions to the climate crisis.”
Climate Change, which is funded by Stonyfield Farm, Inc., uses 22 criteria covering four general categories to provide its company ratings: the extent to which a company has (1) measured its climate footprint, (2) reduced its impact on global warming, (3) supported progressive climate legislation, and (4) publicly disclosed its climate-related actions in a clear and comprehensive way.
To get the ratings, consumers can either search the website or send a text message to Climate Counts—the latter being a pretty cool option for when you’re actually out shopping.
The only downside is that so far there are ratings for only 56 companies across eight sectors. Then again, Climate Counts is still new, and collecting and processing this type of information is nontrivial. I’m excited to see how the effort develops.
