Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Environment counts in consumer decisions
By Mary Jane Weedman
Washington Square News (NYU)
10/02/2007

(U-WIRE) NEW YORK — When choosing between a Hewlett-Packard and an Apple, one normally considers their features - like hard disk space, the amount of RAM or the graphics card. But Climate Counts lets you evaluate something else: How does your choice affect the environment?

Climate Counts is a nonprofit organization that rates companies on their commitment to fighting global warming, and it gives HP a much higher rating - 59/100 - than Apple, at just 2/100.

Climate Counts rates companies based on 22 criteria in four general groups, including whether companies work to reduce environmental impact, how positive their public policies on environmental issues are and how public they make information about their environmental impact.

The issue of publicizing reports is important, project director Wood Turner said. That criteria made Apple's score so low.

"Without information, consumers don't have the [means] to take action," Turner said.

Climate Counts is making that information easier to access. In collaboration with Working Assets Wireless of San Francisco, it has introduced a tool that lets consumers send text messages to receive almost instant information on a company.

For example, a consumer trying to decide whether to have Burger King or McDonald's for lunch could text "CC McDonald's" to 30644 and get a message back with information about McDonald's and its policies.

"Students and other people [can also] use it to communicate with companies directly, sending a message or making a call directly to the companies. We're really excited about the power of mobile communication," Turner said.

Turner said one of his major goals for Climate Counts is to have "strong relationships with consumers we activate and the companies we evaluate."

In building those relationships, he hopes the companies who received low scores will start to change their policies.

"If the 16 companies that have scored 10 points or less have made measurable change to move beyond the lowest tier ... If they can show they're eager to move forward, we'll have done our job," Turner said.

For more information, visit Climatecounts.org

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