ESG ratings have a fundamental problem: they measure disclosure quality, not actual performance. A company can publish a 300-page sustainability report, commit to net-zero by 2050, and earn a top rating - without changing a single operational behaviour.
Walk-The-Talk Score™ is built on a different premise. It measures credibility: the degree to which a company's actions match its stated commitments. The wider the gap between what a company says and what it does, the lower the score.
The Three Pillars
Every Walk-The-Talk Score is built from three data layers:
1. Commitments
We extract ESG commitments from public company disclosures - annual reports, sustainability reports, SEC filings, press releases, and official website statements. Natural language processing identifies specific commitments with measurable targets and timelines. Vague statements like "we care about the environment" are flagged but weighted near zero. Specific commitments like "reduce Scope 1 emissions 40% by 2030 against a 2019 baseline" are weighted heavily.
2. Evidence
For each commitment, we gather third-party evidence of follow-through. Sources include regulatory filings, government databases, NGO reports, litigation records, academic research, and verified investigative journalism. Evidence is matched to commitments using entity resolution and scored for relevance and credibility. A company that commits to supply chain audits and can point to independently verified audit results scores well. One that makes the same commitment with no verifiable follow-through does not.
3. Controversies
Controversies act as a credibility modifier on the final score. We monitor real-time signals that contradict stated positions: lawsuits, regulatory enforcement actions, whistleblower reports, NGO campaigns, and verified news from 200+ countries in 65+ languages. A pending EPA enforcement action against a company claiming environmental leadership directly reduces its score - as it should.
How the Score Is Calculated
The three pillars are combined into a single 0–100 score. Commitments and evidence are weighted roughly equally. Controversies function as a downward modifier - a high-controversy company cannot achieve a top score regardless of its disclosed commitments.
Scores are benchmarked against industry peers, meaning a score of 70 means something different in oil and gas than in software. The specific weighting, reconciliation logic, and scoring thresholds are proprietary, but the underlying principle is transparent: execution beats aspiration.
Why This Matters
Traditional ESG ratings have a well-documented divergence problem. Academic research shows correlations between major providers ranging from 0.38 to 0.71 - far below the 0.99 correlation seen between credit rating agencies. This divergence exists largely because different providers are measuring different things, and most are measuring disclosure rather than performance.
Walk-The-Talk Score is designed to cut through that noise. It cannot be gamed by improving reporting. The only way to improve your score is to close the gap between what you say and what you do.
For a full technical breakdown, see our methodology page.