Patent ID: 8165891

Claim:
A method undertaken on a computer, network or online software package, for ranking an entity against a group of other, like entities, on its environmental and/or social performance, comprising the steps of: a. collecting data regarding the environmental and/or social footprint of said entities and/or their product ranges, said data to include company-level pollutant and/or greenhouse gas emissions data; b. collecting additional normalizing data regarding the size and/or activity of the said entities and/or their product ranges; c. performing normalization calculations using said collected data in order to create derived normalized metrics relating to said entities, by way of using normalizing ratio-type calculations serving to divide data on social and/or ethical impacts by data on size and/or activity; d. performing said calculations on metrics covering at least both the entities' past reductions performance, and current efficiency performance, the latter using the most recent time series data; e. ranking said entities on each metric studied, by reference to comparing said derived normalized metrics of said entities versus similar normalized metrics for the others in the group of comparable entities; f. weighting said resultant ranking metrics at a certain level according to the relevance and relative impacts of each of said metrics to the specific industry grouping to which said entities belong, and/or analyzing them in distinct interim analysis modules; g. calculating a total overall ranking by crossing the values from the one or more different entities and/or interim analysis modules in a data matrix and/or by performing an overall weighted average between modules, the input data being the ranking for each of said entities for said module; h. assigning simplified numerical and/or graphical and/or textual indicia to represent the overall ranking of one or more of the said ranked entities; i. using the simplified indicia in marketing or other publicity-related activities for the entities in online contexts including search engines and social networks, and/or offline contexts.