Terms of use

Short version: the data is free, carry the provenance, don’t misrepresent it. Draft pending counsel review.

The data

All directory content — listings, claims, verifications, corrections — is free to read, cite and reuse, by people and by machines (see our robots signals and llms.txt). When you reuse a verification, carry its provenance: verifier, standard, date and expiry. An assertion shown as unverified must not be described as verified.

What the data is not

Tiers are evidence-completeness classifications, not ratings, scores or endorsements. Nothing here is investment, procurement or compliance advice. Registry checks confirm presence in a scheme owner’s register at a stated date — they are not an audit of the organisation.

Claims, disputes and conduct

Claiming a listing requires demonstrating control of the organisation’s domain, and claiming one you do not control is prohibited. Disputes are reviewed by a named reviewer under the service levels on the methodology page; submitting knowingly false disputes is prohibited. We may suppress listings pending review; nothing is silently deleted.

Purchases

The verified compliance profile is an annual subscription, billed by Stripe on its hosted checkout page; the price is shown there before you pay. Buying it grants the managers of one organisation the right to submit compliance declarations for staff review during the subscription term. Publication is not guaranteed: a submission is reviewed against the same evidence standard as every other record, and a rejected submission neither refunds nor consumes the term — correct it and resubmit. You can cancel at any time through the billing portal linked from your account page; cancelling stops the next renewal and access continues to the end of the paid period.

Enhanced listings

An enhanced listing is an annual subscription, billed by Stripe as above, that lets the managers of one organisation add presentation to its page: a logo, a tagline, a longer description, highlights and an optional contact form, marked “Member”. It is presentation only. It does not change the organisation’s tier, its verifications, its position in search results or what the API returns, and the mark must not be described as verification. Content must be truthful and about the organisation; ESGOS may hide content that breaks these rules (the standard record stays visible and the manager is told why). When the subscription lapses the page reverts to the standard presentation; the content is kept and returns on renewal. The contact form relays a visitor’s message once to the organisation’s managers with the visitor’s address as reply-to and keeps no copy; it is rate-limited and may be withdrawn from a listing that misuses it.

Portal licences

A portal is a co-branded view of the public directory licensed to an institution — an exchange, ministry, chamber, development bank or agency — so it can see its own list of companies against ESGOS and invite the ones not yet listed. It is an infrastructure licence, invoiced offline under a separate agreement; it is not sold on this site and no card is taken for it. A portal has no effect on any organisation’s record: not its tier, its verifications, its claim, its search position or what the API returns — the only visible trace on an organisation’s page is a plain-text line naming the portal(s) it is listed on, and being on a portal must not be described as verification, endorsement or ranking by ESGOS. Everything a portal shows is already free and public here; a licence grants no right to resell, sublicense or redistribute registry data as a product, and reuse of it stays under The data above. The partner is responsible for the lawful basis of the contacts it uploads and chooses to invite, and for the accuracy of its own list; ESGOS may unpublish a portal or suspend a workspace that misuses invitations or misrepresents what a portal is (the partner is told why). When a licence ends the portal page is withdrawn and the workspace tools close; the partner’s rows are kept for its return and contact addresses continue to expire on the schedule described in the privacy notice.

GREEN AWARDS

The GREEN AWARDS are editorial recognition by a jury for a specific achievement in a specific year. They are not a rating, a certification or a sustainability label, and they do not change any organisation’s verification status on ESGOS. Entering is free and open to the managers of any published organisation while an edition is open; nominating is free and needs no account. There is no entry fee, no paid nomination and no product attached to an award: nothing purchasable on this site affects who is shortlisted or wins. Each edition’s categories and criteria are published before entries open and are locked from then on (later clarifications are appended as dated notes, never rewritten); the jury decides against those criteria at its sole discretion, and its written rationale for every shortlist and winner is published on the announcement date. An entry must be truthful and about the entering organisation’s own achievement; ESGOS may decline an entry that does not meet the criteria and may rescind an honour that was obtained on a false or misleading entry, in which case the awards page carries a published note saying so. Being a winner or shortlisted must be cited as what it is (“Winner — <category>, GREEN AWARDS <year>”) and must not be described as a rating, certification, verification or endorsement of the organisation as a whole.

Liability

The directory is provided as-is. We work to keep it accurate — every verification is dated and expires, and upheld disputes produce public corrections — but we cannot guarantee any third party’s underlying certification status.