You can't compare apples and oranges and to this point we've lacked a consistent way of interrogating Australia's businesses on their undertakings on climate change and the environment.
Not that many companies haven't erected convenient smokescreens. If we want change, though, we must become more serious and more organised about it.
In the established model, those larger companies that report on their efforts towards sustainability do it of their own volition and select those of their activities and impacts on which they will report, offering no dialogue or possibility of recourse to their audience.
It is time to flip this on its head.
In a social sustainability reporting regime, the concerned internet crowd, guided by experts and interrogators in its midst, identifies and homes in on a company's negative environmental impacts to tell it exactly what it wants to see that target company reporting on.
Many companies will find the potency of such a sustained social enquiry - conducted in parallel through Facebook and other key social media - uncomfortable, or possibly disruptive.
But even businesses in that camp with a mind to do so can find in it an opportunity to turn it to their competitive advantage.
