If we are encouraging other companies to be transparent, we need to be transparent too.

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Arbor Index Score

In order to give you accurate information to guide your purchasing decisions, Arbor collects data from a variety of sources. The data from these sources are methodically standardized to provide you with a score that is easy to understand.

GLEIF is an organization who provides data that allows us to determine the parent company. Using the parent company, Arabesque and B Corporation data enable Arbor to generate the Arbor Impact Score. Using the Arabesque S-Ray tool, the ESG and GC scores are averaged out for each company and converted into a percentile. B corporation provides additional scores for various companies which are standardized to be comparable to the other data.

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Arabesque S-Ray

Arabesque S-Ray is a tool that provides Corporate Social Responsibility data on over 7,000 companies. Arbor uses the Global Compact (GC) score and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) score and methodically transforms them to create our cross-datasource, standardized, Arbor Impact Score (AIS).

B Corporation

B Corporation provides data on businesses who meet their social and environmental standards. For each certified B Corporation, a score is given. These scores are then standardized into our Arbor Impact Score.

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Hierarchy of company ownership

Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF)

Many companies don't have direct scores because they are owned by a parent company. GLEIF provides a LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) for corporations to help us identify the parent company. This allows Arbor to give you insights on a wide range of businesses, as well as their subsidiaries.

Our Monetization

We believe in promoting a world where corporations strive to be ethical, while still being able to create profits. Arbor strives to fit into this world, by promoting ethical business, operating ethically internally, and still being profitable.

Arbor exists as an intermediary to encourage this ethical profit/purchase model. The Arbor browser extension suggests alternative businesses who align with your personal values and provides some suggestions for coupons associated with these companies. In order to cover the data and server costs, Arbor recieves a small commission for each purchase made using one of these coupons.

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Affiliate Networks

Arbor has partnered with multiple networks including Rakuten, Awin, ShareAScale, and PerformCB to provide a broad range of coupons. These coupons are advertised on the browser extension to provide the best deals at companies that better align with your values.

Frequently Asked Questions

Glad you asked! Using GLEIF data, each company is traced back to its parent company, if applicable. Using the parent company, Arabesque and B Corporation data are used to assign the company a score, which is standardized according to our methodical algorithm. Each company score is then standardized to a score between 0 and 100.

Arabesque S-Ray GmbH is a leading global provider of environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics and data services. Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, and with offices around the world, Arabesque S-Ray GmbH was established independently in 2018 following its initial development at the Arabesque Group. Arabesque S-Ray GmbH provides data solutions that are used across global capital markets to assess the sustainability performance of companies worldwide.

S-Ray® is Arabesque’s unique tool that provides four lenses for analysis on the sustainability of the world’s largest corporations by way of the GC Score, ESG Score, Preferences Filter, and Temperature™ Score. The respective calculations for each score have different methodologies but all are entirely data driven. For more information regarding the methodologies please get in touch.

Currently, the S-Ray universe consists of approximately 7,000 publicly listed companies in both developed and emerging markets.  We do not limit our universe to certain regions, sectors, benchmarks, or any other specification. S-Ray aims to eventually cover every single company in the world.

The GC Score provides a normative assessment of companies based on the four core principles of the United Nations Global Compact (GC): human rights, labour rights, the environment and anti-corruption. With more than 12,000 corporate signatories from over 160 countries, the Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. It calls on companies and stakeholders to conduct business responsibly, and to pursue opportunities that advance sustainable development goals. With Arabesque S-Ray®, these principles are quantified for the first time, with the potential to inspire more companies to take shared responsibility and join the Global Compact in its commitment to achieve a sustainable and inclusive global economy.

While the GC Score builds from a normative framework to approximate reputational risk, the ESG Score is all about identifying companies that are better positioned to outperform over the long term. To understand the potential for long-term performance, the S-Ray® methodology considers the principle of financial materiality. That is, when computing the ESG Score of a company the algorithm will only use information that significantly helps explain future risk-adjusted performance. Materiality is applied by more heavily weighting features with higher materiality, and weights are rebalanced on a rolling quarterly basis.

The Preferences Filter is a collection of binary scores that allows the user to check the involvement of companies in controversial activities, therefore being able to avoid engaging with companies that do not align with personal values and preferences. The Preferences Filter looks at revenue streams and will flag a company as involved in an activity when its annual revenue stream from that activity exceeds 5%. Current available filters include: Adult Entertainment, Alcohol, Defence, Fossil Fuel, Gambling, GMO, Nuclear, Pork, Stem Cells, Tobacco and Weapons.

The Temperature™ Score reflects a company’s climate impact and its level of climate ambition. It is Arabesque S-Ray®’s unique new metric that measures the extent to which corporations across the world are contributing to the rise in global temperature. By translating the greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from each company to a score based on sector-specific emissions pathways, the Temperature™ Score recognizes the companies who are leaders in climate action. Companies can receive a score of 1.5°C, 2°C, 2.7°C, >2.7°C or 3°C, where the 3°C score is reserved for companies that do not sufficiently disclose their emissions. Three additional indicators are calculated to differentiate between companies: Target, Trend and Scope 3.

S-Ray® scores are calculated on a daily basis. Temperature™ scores are updated weekly.

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