Methodology
How SustainCheck scores are calculated
Last updated: September 2026
The SustainScore is a figure from 0 to 100 for a company. The higher it is, the better that company’s sustainability-related risks are covered in the independent data we rely on. This page explains, in plain terms, how every SustainScore is built: the pillars, the steps, and the data behind it.
This page is a deep dive into our full methodology. For a shorter overview, see how scoring works on our home page.
Every company’s real numbers tell a different story. A version of this explanation built around your own company is next on our list.
What the SustainScore measures
The SustainScore measures how sustainable a company is, to the extent we can see that in independent data. Sustainability has two meanings here.
- Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) are the yardstick for a company’s sustainability: climate, people, and how the company is governed.
- Finance is financial sustainability: whether the company can continue over the medium term without an external rescue.
Same word, two measurements. A high score means that company’s sustainability-related risks are better covered in the data we use. It is not a seal that nothing can go wrong.
What the SustainScore is for
- Map sustainability-related risks among suppliers.
- Support a better-founded supplier choice on sustainability.
- Compare companies on the same scale.
What it does not measure
- No guarantee. We rely on data we can find. What is not in that data is not in the score.
- No prices and no competitive position. Whether a supplier is cheap or expensive does not count.
- No information from the company’s own website. Own claims are not independent evidence. Greenwashing does not belong in the score. Whether a company is B Corp certified, for example, is taken from an independent register, not from what the company writes about itself.
The SustainScore runs from 0 to 100, for one legal entity. 0 means the risks are not covered in the independent data available. 100 means they are strongly covered, with no guarantee. The four pillars, Environment, Social, Governance and Finance, all use this same scale, which keeps the total readable.
Four pillars, twenty-two subcategories
Every SustainScore is built from four pillars, each scored from 0 to 100, and twenty-two subcategories in total. Environment (six subcategories), Social (eight) and Governance (four) form the ESG block, the yardstick for how sustainable a company is. Finance, the fourth pillar (four subcategories), measures the company’s own financial sustainability. Environment, Social and Governance follow the same three steps; Finance follows the annual accounts instead.
The structure draws heavily on the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS)[1]. It is not a one-to-one copy. The ESRS were written for reporting. SustainCheck was written to map risks, which is why some ESRS themes are split further, or pulled apart.
- Environment: E4 measures the company’s impact on nature. E5 measures the company’s dependence on nature. In the ESRS, impact and dependence sit closer together.
- Social: eight subcategories instead of four ESRS standards. S1 to S3 cover the company’s own workers, S4 to S6 the same themes in the value chain, S7 affected communities, and S8 consumers and end-users.
- Governance: four subcategories instead of one ESRS standard, so that governance, corruption, culture and value-chain management can score separately.
Environment
- E1
- Climate change. Mitigation and adaptation, energy, emissions across scope 1, 2 and 3. Not physical dependence on ecosystems (that is E5), and not materials and waste (E6).
- E2
- Pollution. Air, water, soil, substances of concern, microplastics. The chemical composition of discharges belongs here. Water as a volume falls under E3.
- E3
- Water and marine resources. Use, withdrawal, discharges as volume, extraction of marine resources. Impact on species at sea falls under E4.
- E4
- Biodiversity, ecosystems and species. The company’s impact on nature, ecosystems and species. Not dependence on that nature, which falls under E5.
- E5
- Ecosystem dependencies. Risk to the company if nature fails: flooding, drought, pollination, soil fertility. A deliberate extra split relative to the ESRS.
- E6
- Resource use and circular economy. Inflow, use and outflow of materials, waste. Not pollution as a substance, which falls under E2.
Social
- S1
- Own workforce working conditions. Pay, time, job security, safety, social dialogue, work-life balance. The quality of work on the company’s own shop floor. An accident at a subcontractor falls under S4.
- S2
- Own workforce equality and diversity. Gender, equal pay, inclusion, training, violence and harassment at work. Board diversity falls under G1.
- S3
- Own workforce labour rights. Child labour, forced labour, housing, privacy. Fundamental rights, not the quality of working conditions covered in S1. Customer privacy falls under S8, and child labour at a supplier falls under S6.
- S4
- Working conditions in the value chain. The same theme as S1, but for workers at suppliers and subcontractors.
- S5
- Equality and diversity in the value chain. The same theme as S2, in the chain.
- S6
- Labour rights in the value chain. The same theme as S3, in the chain. A company can score strongly on S1 to S3 and weakly on S4 to S6.
- S7
- Affected communities. Land rights, safety, voice, free, prior and informed consent. No employment relationship, but an impact on people living nearby. Poor working conditions at a supplier fall under S4 to S6, not here.
- S8
- Consumers and end-users. Privacy, safety, access to information, protection of vulnerable groups, non-discrimination. Privacy of the company’s own workers falls under S3.
Governance
- G1
- Governance, ownership and remuneration. How the company is governed and owned, and how pay is linked. Diversity on the shop floor falls under S2. What the board decides on ethics or the chain falls under G2 to G4.
- G2
- Corruption, fraud and influence. Bribery, fraud, lobbying, political involvement. Whether a reporting channel exists falls under G3.
- G3
- Culture, compliance and whistleblowing. Tone at the top, compliance with rules, reporting channels, and where relevant, animal welfare. A bribery case itself falls under G2.
- G4
- Value-chain management. Whether there is a system to govern the chain and pay suppliers. Child labour in the chain scores in S6, not here. G4 is the management system, not the outcome.
Finance
- Solvency. Equity versus total assets (equity and liabilities).
- Liquidity. Whether short-term obligations can be paid.
- Profitability. Whether the company earns a return on its assets.
- Cash generation. Cash flow, debt burden and payback. This subcategory weighs heaviest.
How Environment, Social and Governance are calculated
Environment, Social and Governance follow the same three steps. Steps 1 and 2 produce one score per subcategory, through the maximum. Step 3 turns those scores into an Environment score, a Social score and a Governance score.
1. Context score
The context score is the score that follows from the country where a company is located. A company’s country is the context in which that company operates.
We use country datasets, for example WRI Aqueduct[3], ILOSTAT[4], the Worldwide Governance Indicators[5] and the Corruption Perceptions Index[6], and turn them into our own signal per subcategory, on the 0 to 100 scale.
2. Indicators
An indicator is a certificate, label, standard or similar instrument that says something about a company’s sustainability. Each indicator we include has its own indicator analysis: which subcategories, which score, which outcomes.
Only the exact company counts. An indicator belonging to a parent, a subsidiary or a brand is not an indicator of this legal entity.
Per subcategory, we keep the higher figure: the context score or an indicator score. If the indicator is higher, it applies. If it is lower or missing, the context score remains. If a company has several indicators on the same subcategory, the maximum also applies today; overlap between indicators has not yet been analysed.
3. Activity weighting
Not every subcategory weighs equally. That depends on the company’s activity, under the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC, Revision 4) of the United Nations[2].
Each Environment subcategory has its own weight, from 0 to 100. The average of all six becomes the Environment weight. The same applies to Social, across its eight subcategories. Governance has no activity weight per subcategory: G1 to G4 count equally. The weights per subcategory come from datasets we use for that purpose: ENCORE[7], for example, for how activities relate to nature, and ILOSTAT[4] for the Social weighting.
Social
Based on the real Social subcategories.
Based on the real Social subcategories. B Corp’s coverage is broad; Fairtrade’s is narrow and value-chain-specific.
Financial sustainability
The Finance score measures whether the company can continue to exist financially over the medium term, based on the annual accounts. It is not a credit rating, not investment advice, and not a view on ESG.
Classic ratios follow from the annual accounts. Each ratio is converted to a score from 0 to 100. Those sub-scores are grouped into four subcategories, and within each subcategory the score is the weighted average of the ratios:
Solvency (weight 25)
- Equity ratio: equity divided by total assets.
- Reserves relative to assets: retained earnings as a buffer.
- Equity relative to debt: coverage of debt by equity.
Liquidity (weight 25)
- Current ratio: current assets divided by current liabilities.
- Working capital relative to assets: net current assets relative to the balance-sheet total.
- Cash relative to current liabilities: immediate ability to pay.
- Quick ratio: the current ratio without inventories.
Profitability (weight 20)
- Return on assets: net profit divided by total assets.
- EBIT relative to assets: operating profit relative to the balance-sheet total.
- Net margin: net profit divided by revenue.
Cash generation (weight 30, the heaviest)
- Interest coverage: operating profit divided by interest expense.
- Debt relative to EBITDA: how many years of earnings it takes to carry the debt.
- Debt payback period: years until net debt is repaid from cash flow.
- Cash flow relative to revenue: how much of revenue comes in as cash.
- Cash-flow proxy relative to debt: cash flow relative to financial debt.
If the input for a ratio is missing, that ratio is not set to 0. It drops out, and the other ratios in the same subcategory then count more heavily. If a whole subcategory is missing, that weight leaves the denominator entirely.
Cash generation weighs heaviest because cash-flow ratios have historically been among the stronger signals of financial stress[9]. The conversion of a ratio to a 0-to-100 score follows thresholds from established accounts-analysis practice, including Quicktest logic and market-typical leverage benchmarks[10, 12]. Dropping a missing ratio instead of setting it to zero fits the same approach used for scoring incomplete annual accounts[11].
Final correction: if equity is negative, the Finance score is at most 35. If the calculated score is already lower, that lower score remains. This follows going-concern logic: without a restoration of equity, continuity is not a given[13, 14].
How it all comes together
Pillar weights are the weights of Environment, Social, Governance and Finance in the SustainScore. The Environment weight is the average of the E1 to E6 weights. The Social weight is the average of the S1 to S8 weights.
Governance and Finance sit at 50, the middle of the 0 to 100 scale. A company’s activity is neutral as to the importance of those two pillars. Environment and Social may count more or less depending on the activity.
First the sum of the pillar weights, then the SustainScore itself, as the weighted average of all four pillars using those weights:
If there are no annual accounts, there is no Finance score. The Finance weight is 0, and the total is redistributed across Environment, Social and Governance. There is no substitute Finance score of 50.
Worked example: Sustainn’t
Sustainn’t is a fictional company. This section shows the calculation steps, not an assessment of a real company. Its activity is ISIC 6201, computer programming activities, and it is a Certified B Corporation[8]. The context scores and activity weights below stand for signals from the datasets we use; only the company itself is invented.
B Corp (80) beats the context score (68), so the indicator applies.
The context score (61) beats B Corp (54). A lower indicator never pulls the score down.
No B Corp score on E5, so the context score (60) remains.
Without B Corp, every subcategory stays on its context score: Environment 61, Social 61, Governance 66, for a SustainScore of 66. B Corp lifts Sustainn’t from 66 to 68 here. The lift is relatively small because the company already had a high context score.
Data sources
Below are examples of sources we use. This is not a complete list, and sources come and go. We turn source data into our own signal. The SustainScore is not a score of the source holder.
- [9]Beaver, W.H. (1966). Financial Ratios as Predictors of Failure. Journal of Accounting Research, 4, 71 to 111.
- [10]Kralicek, P. Foundations of the Quicktest, ratio analysis of the annual accounts.
- [11]Ooghe, H., Spaenjers, C. and Vandermoere, P. (2005). Financial scoring with incomplete annual accounts (SIM).
Open issues
The open issues of the current model are listed below.
- 1Several indicators on the same subcategory: the maximum applies today. Overlap and difference between indicators have not yet been analysed, so they are not in the score.
- 2Two companies in the same country, with no indicators, can get a different SustainScore solely because of a different activity. That does not mean one activity is more sustainable than the other. In some cases that distorts the picture.
- 3Companies with few or no indicators are differentiated less. The context score then weighs heavily, which is not equally fair in every case.
- 4Company size is not yet taken into the score.
- 5An activity that is inherently less burdensome does not get a higher starting score for that. Activity only changes the weighting.
- 6Negative signals, such as sanctions or convictions, are not yet in the set.
- 7There is no separate signal for how reliable or how complete a figure is.
- 8Finance does not use a sector comparison. The same ratio counts the same across activities.
- 9Business models whose impact does not sit in a certificate or in the annual accounts are not captured by the model today.
- 10The context score follows the country where the company is located. A company with activities in several countries does not yet get separate treatment for that.
Legal notice
The SustainScore is SustainCheck’s estimate based on the independent data available. It is not assurance, not an audit opinion, not a credit rating and not an investment recommendation. It is not a complete inventory of all of a company’s risks.
Source holders named above are not partners of SustainCheck merely because their data serve as an example or as input. They do not endorse the SustainScore. Scores may change if data, indicators or this method change.