AstraZeneca Tops Climate Counts Scorecard among Four Sectors

The latest Climate Counts scorecard, an updated evaluation of 47 of the top companies in the pharmaceutical, home and office furnishing, toys and children’s equipment and large appliance sectors, shows that companies continue to improve their climate commitment, but their pace is far slower than what is required to meet the climate challenge, says the nonprofit group.

AstraZeneca tops the climate performance scorecard among the four sectors with 79 points out of a possible 100. Steelcase is the sector leader for home/office furnishings) with 60 points, Whirlpool tops the large appliances sector with 68 points and Hasbro leads the toys and children’s equipment sector with 37 points.

The companies are scored based on 22 criteria that measure companies’ efforts to assess their own climate footprint, reduce their emissions, support (or block) progress on major climate legislation, and communicate their efforts to consumers

This round of scoring showed broad improvement, with 30 companies increasing their score, reports Climate Counts. The most improved include Kenmore (up by 29 points), Lego (up by 22 points) and AB Electrolux (up 19 points).

The report also found that many improvements were small with 32 of the 47 companies either losing ground, not improving, or raising their scores less than five points.

Another key finding reveals that the toys and children’s equipment sector had the lowest overall sector score, and 8 of 14 of those companies scored zero points. Most toy makers failed the grade last year as well.

In comparison, the pharmaceutical sector had the highest overall score in this round, with 11 of 13 companies earning Climate Counts’ “Striding” designation with scores of 50 points or higher.

In February, Climate Counts launched its Industry Innovators (i2) initiative, allowing companies to go through the Climate Counts benchmarking system voluntarily.

The group also released an iPhone application that allows consumers to access company climate scores while shopping. It also allows them to send messages to those companies about their scores. The content and functionality of that application will soon be available on a variety of smart phone platforms.