Methodology

This page is the public reference for how WhatsMyESG generates an ESG report. It is intended for prospective subscribers, analysts evaluating our credibility, and entities that have been scored and want to understand the inputs.

Informational only. Not investment, legal, financial, tax, or regulatory-compliance advice. Built on public-record data; not predictive of future events. See Disclaimer for the full statement.

See /companies for the full database of pre-built ESG and EPA-compliance snapshots, source-cited and refreshed every six hours.

1. What WME Produces

For each entity you query — a company, a physical address, or a brand — WME produces a structured report containing:

• A composite ESG score (0–100), built from three sub-scores: Environmental (E), Social (S), and Governance (G).
• Sub-score narratives explaining the data points that drove each rating.
• Source citations linking back to the underlying public records.
• Confidence band — high / medium / low — reflecting the depth and freshness of source data we found for the entity.

Reports are generated on demand. You may refresh a report at any time during your subscription; the new run will pick up data published since the prior run.

2. Data Sources

We draw from public sources only. We do not pay third-party data brokers for proprietary feeds, and we do not ingest leaked or unauthorized datasets. The primary sources we presently consult are:

Coverage depth varies by entity type. Public U.S. companies have the deepest source pool. Private U.S. companies have moderate coverage. Non-U.S. entities have lower coverage from U.S. federal sources but pick up framework-disclosed data where the entity publishes it. Confidence band on each report reflects this.

3. Frameworks We Reference

We anchor categorization and disclosure expectations to the following recognized frameworks. We do not certify against any of them; we use them as taxonomies for organizing public data and as benchmarks for what disclosure looks like “at industry standard.”

• GRI (Global Reporting Initiative).Universal and topic standards for sustainability disclosure. Widely used for the “S” pillar.
• SASB Standards.Industry-specific financial materiality standards. SASB is administered by the IFRS Foundation and feeds into the ISSB’s standards.
• TCFD recommendations.The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures’ four-pillar framework (Governance, Strategy, Risk Management, Metrics & Targets). The TCFD’s recommendations are now embedded within ISSB IFRS S2.
• ISSB IFRS S1 & S2.The International Sustainability Standards Board’s general (S1) and climate-specific (S2) sustainability disclosure standards. IFRS S2 fully integrates the TCFD recommendations.
• CDP. Voluntary climate, water, and forests disclosure questionnaires.

4. How the Score Is Built

Each pillar (E, S, G) is composed of weighted indicators drawn from the source pool above. Indicators include:

• Environmental: regulatory-violation count and severity (EPA ECHO), permitted-facility risk profile, disclosed emissions and reduction targets, water and waste disclosures, environmental litigation outcomes.
• Social: disclosed workforce composition, safety metrics where available, supplier-code disclosure, community impact disclosures, labor-practice litigation outcomes.
• Governance: board independence and composition disclosures, executive-compensation alignment with disclosed targets, audit and risk-committee disclosures, governance-related litigation, presence and substance of an ESG / sustainability governance structure.

Each pillar produces a 0–100 sub-score. The composite is a weighted average; weights are documented in the report itself. We publish the weights and indicator catalog in the report so you can audit the score.

5. What WME Is Not

• Not an audit, attestation, or assurance opinion (e.g., ISAE 3000, AICPA SSAE 18).
• Not a Phase I or Phase II Environmental Site Assessment, an ASTM E1527-21 deliverable, or any other regulatory-compliance product.
• Not an investment rating. We are not a credit-rating agency, an NRSRO, or a registered investment adviser.
• Not an underwriting input. Output is not designed for, and should not be used as, the sole or material basis for an underwriting decision.
• Not a substitute for a state-licensed geologist, attorney, or licensed financial advisor.

See the full Disclaimer.

6. Known Limitations

• Public-data ceiling. If a regulator does not publish, an entity does not disclose, or a record is sealed, we cannot ingest it. Absence of negative data is not evidence of good performance.
• Freshness drift. We pull source data at the time of report generation. Source publishers update on their own schedules; some monthly, some quarterly, some on event. Refresh a report to pick up new data.
• Entity matching. Common names, recent rebrands, and corporate-structure changes can produce ambiguous matches. Reports surface confidence flags when matching is uncertain.
• Non-U.S. coverage. Framework-anchored indicators travel internationally; U.S.-regulator-anchored indicators do not. Non-U.S. entities therefore lean more on voluntary disclosure than on enforcement records.
• Methodology evolution. Frameworks, regulations, and our own indicator weights change. The same entity can score differently across methodology versions. We version our methodology and document changes (current: v1.0).

7. Refresh Cadence

Reports are refreshed on demand by the subscriber. We do not maintain a continuous push-monitoring layer in v1.0. If a subscriber has not refreshed a report, the displayed score reflects the data state at last generation; the report header carries the run timestamp.

8. Methodology Versioning

This is methodology v1.0, effective May 2, 2026. Future versions will be assigned a new version number and announced here. Reports retain a version stamp at generation time so you can trace how a score was produced.

9. Authorship & Credentials

WME’s methodology was designed and is maintained by Dr. M. Elansary, holding a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Texas A&M University–Kingsville (2022) and a Master of Science in Environmental Engineering. Dr. Elansary is an ASTM E1527-21 Environmental Professional with twenty-plus years of practice in environmental engineering and ESG advisory work, and is the founder and principal of Vertexium Environmental Solutions, the Dallas-based environmental consulting practice that operates WME.

10. JSON API for AI Engines & Researchers

Every published /company/<slug> page has a machine-readable JSON twin at https://whatsmyesg.com/api/company/<slug>. The endpoint is open-read with permissive CORS, returns all top-level compliance fields plus the full page_content object, and carries cache headers tuned for AI-engine fan-out (s-maxage=3600, stale-while-revalidate=86400).

For AI agent discovery: /.well-known/ai.json is a JSON descriptor of every public endpoint plus our attribution and AI-training policy. /llms.txt is the Markdown twin of the same descriptor, following the llms.txt proposed convention. Either is suitable as a starting probe for an LLM crawler.

Each /company/<slug> HTML page also carries Schema.org Dataset JSON-LD so the page is eligible for Google Dataset Search and AI engines that key off structured-data markup. Recommended attribution format:

WhatsMyESG, https://whatsmyesg.com/company/<slug>, last_updated <ISO date from JSON response>.

11. Feedback & Corrections

If you are an analyst with a methodology question, or an entity that has been scored and you believe a specific data point is materially inaccurate or has been superseded by a regulator’s correction, contact info@whatsmyesg.com with the source citation. We will review and, where supported by the underlying source, refresh the Output in our next scheduled run.