CSRHub Blog Research on ESG metrics and comments on sustainability best practice

CSRHub is pleased to announce that EIRIS, a global leader in the provision of environmental, social, governance (ESG) research for responsible investors, has begun providing its ESG data to CSRHub’s information service.  This brings the benefits of EIRIS’ almost 30 years of responsible investment experience, understanding of ESG issues, and knowledge of corporate practice and experience of practical solutions to CSRHub’s 6,500 users.

EIRIS’ sector-based research teams provide in-depth coverage of around 3,300 companies globally, covering over 100 different environment, social and governance issues. This data will enhance the sustainability and CSR data CSRHub offers on more than 6,500 companies across 135 industries and 70 countries.

“We are proud to include this well designed and highly respected information in our system,” said Bahar Gidwani, Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder of CSRHub.  “We are also proud to be associated with a firm who shares our commitment to improving corporate sustainability performance and to increasing transparent access to CSR data.”

Peter Webster, Executive Director at EIRIS, said “CSRHub is a great resource and we are delighted to provide ESG data as part of our efforts to broaden the global reach of our responsible investment research.”

About EIRIS

EIRIS (www.eiris.org) is an independent, not-for-profit organisation, working to help clients develop the market in ways that benefit investors, asset managers and the wider world. Their mission is to empower responsible investors with independent assessments of companies and advice on integrating them with investment decisions. Their sector-based research teams provide in-depth coverage of around 3,000 companies globally, covering over 200 different environment, social and governance issues.

About CSRHub, LLC

CSRHub creates simple, direct comparisons of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Sustainability performance among competitors and across supply chains, industry, and regions. It reinforces third-party standards and encourages transparency and responsible behavior.

Our comprehensive database of CSR information provides you a complete set of sustainability metrics and tools. We support and serve the decision-making needs of corporate managers, researchers and activists.

Matthew Kiernan makes a gutsy call on the Responsible Investor site for a new term--strategically aware investing--to replace RI (Responsible Investing), ESG (Environment, Social, Governance), and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).  It takes guts to come up with a new acronym, especially one that contains the word “strategic”. While I continue to believe as I said in our CSRHUB blog that “a rose is a rose”, words have power, and we definitely need to break through old mindsets to mainstream sustainability. However, sometimes good words take a long time to reach currency, when at the outset they seem “nichey” and live on the edge.

For example, well over ten years ago I had the opportunity to hear the CEO in a Fortune 50 company address his Environment, Health and Safety group. He openly derided the term “sustainability” as part of a cadre of paradigm shifting terms, dismissing it as if created by some academic that had no relationship with the real world. Fast forward and this same person is now CEO of another major American corporation where both the word and the implementation of sustainability are fully embraced and in full drive. Terms (and their underlying concepts) take time to catch on, be part of business practice, and become so integrated that they are hardly used to distinguish excellent operations (think “quality”) from the ordinary.

I applaud the intent of mainstreaming the practice of considering CSR and ESG in investing (and other economic decision making). However, I’d prefer not to create new terms, if we can help it.  Instead, let’s keep pushing the mainstream to understand the current sustainability acronyms until they achieve more universally accepted currency rather than increasing the number of noodles in the alphabet soup of sustainability-related terms.