We use a rating scale to establish the social and environmental responsibility of retail sector businesses.The social score is an assessment of how the business treats its employees, its customers, and its community. The environmental score is based on the impact of the business on our planetary environment. This is not a new concept, rather we have evolved a new way to apply it with some additions.
Few if any retail sector businesses do any direct substantial harm to the environment. They are stores and warehouses, so their direct environmental responsibility is fairly simple to establish. The social responsibility aspect is based on how the businesses handle employees, customers, and community relationships and also fairly simple to assess.
The score is actually weighted mainly towards their Business to Business (B2B) activities: who they are doing business with for products they source to sell, and even services. Our goal is to trace the supply chain back to the industrial sector of our society where we do the actual damage to our planet. Very few people know exactly what goes on at that level, which is where we want to support industries to make the changes we all need to see.
The ESA program is a way for us to harness our existing socio-economic systems and habits to make the changes no one can really afford to make. We build companies to make a profit, we work to make a profit to spend money on things we need and things we want. We may emotionally and socially “want” to help restore our planet and change things in a positive way, but we simply don't have the resources. At EarthCorp we believe that nonprofits must fail by virtue of their existence because they run counter to the structure of society which is to make a profit. We are driven by economics. If we all had to continuously donate to support environmental programs we would go broke, and the programs would never get done. WIth the ESA program, we all earn money doing the same things we do every day, with no need to make any changes. Consumers make a profit, businesses make a profit, and everyone wins with no need to donate money or time. This is our audacious idea, and we hope you will become part of it.