What companies say about sustainability
VS
What their data actually shows
The Illumination Index scores seven major companies on how honestly they communicate their sustainability commitments across energy, consumer goods, tech, and more. This is a research prototype developed by Sophie Sebastian, a graduate student at the University of Oregon.
Photo by Janus Z Walczak
7 Corporations. One Transparency Score.
Why It Matters
Owned media such as social media posts, website pages, and brand partnerships are intentionally designed to show audiences the best possible version of a company's sustainability efforts, but so are the legal documents companies are required to publish. Sustainability reports function as strategic communications, not neutral records. Most of them are very good at sounding like something they are not.
The gap between what a company claims about its environmental impact and what its own data actually shows is real, measurable, and almost never named directly. Consumers, investors, and policymakers are making decisions inside that gap. Most existing rating systems measure what companies do. Almost none measure how honestly companies describe it.
That distinction is the entire point of this project.
Photo by Elbert Lora
What Is The Illumination Index?
The Illumination Index scores companies on communicative integrity, not ESG performance. I developed the underlying scoring methodology, the ESG Communicative Transparency Framework, specifically for this project
It scores companies across eleven indicators in two categories: greenwashing risk and credibility gap. I applied it to seven major corporations, anchored every score to specific evidence, and built a methodology with verified reliability.
I couldn’t find a reliable transparency framework, so I built one.