How your score works and what moves it

What is the DitchCarbon score?

A number from 0 to 100 that summarises whether your company is acting on its emissions, built from dozens of data points on your profile, and shown next to a comparison with the average for your industry. Customers use it to act without having to read every supplier's report, which is the point: a procurement team cannot become specialists in the GHG Protocol and the SBTi for every supplier, and the score carries that reading into one comparable figure. It is not a black box. The criteria and their weights are published, each is shown on your profile as met or not, and the source documents behind every figure are one click away.

What are the criteria?

They are grouped by weight. The methodology page carries the current list; at the time of writing it is this.

WeightCriteriaHighReduced absolute emissions in the last year; reduced emissions intensity (per unit of revenue) in the last year; an SBTi net zero commitment; operating in a low-emitting industryMediumThe same reductions over the previous two years; disclosed Scope 1, 2 and 3 in the last year; reported all the Scope 3 categories relevant to your industry; SBTi near-term or long-term targetsLowClimate Pledge signatory; UN Global Compact environmental initiative; CDP disclosure; Scope 1, 2 and 3 disclosed over the previous two years; headquarters in a low-emitting country; third-party assurance on last year's report

Two of these you cannot change (your industry and your headquarters). The rest you can, and the weights tell you where to start.

What moves it most?

Reducing. The highest-weighted criteria are about your emissions actually falling, in absolute terms and per unit of revenue, year on year. Everything else on the list supports that or evidences it. So the order of actions that raise the score is the order this section already follows.

a score that is rising, with the criteria you have met visible and the ones you are working on named in your plan. Nobody expects a small supplier to meet all of them in year one.

Why is my score low when I have done a lot?

Usually because the profile does not yet hold what you have done. The score is calculated from the data on the profile, and if your reductions, your target or your assurance statement are in a report nobody has uploaded, they do not count. Claim the profile, upload the documents, and the criteria update. The second common reason is that your figures are still from industry data because you have not published or added your own; an industry-data profile cannot show a reduction.

How do I see which criteria I have met?

On your profile, each criterion is shown as met or not, with the figure or document that supports it. The recommendations on a claimed profile list the criteria you have not met in the order that would move the score most for a company like yours. That list is, in effect, your plan.

How does the comparison with my industry work?

Your score is shown against the mean score for your industry and as a percentile rank within it, so a customer sees whether you are ahead of or behind companies like you rather than against a corporation in another sector. A score of 40 in an industry whose average is 25 reads very differently from the same score where the average is 60.

open your profile, read the recommendations, and pick the first unmet criterion you can meet this quarter. For most suppliers that is publishing a second year's figures or signing a commitment.

What should I do next?

Reusing scorecards, disclosures and past questionnaires covers how to get documents you already have onto the profile so they count. If you do not have a target yet, setting a reduction target without a sustainability team is the step that moves a medium-weighted criterion.