Second place AIM Hackathon: Trustpilot for ESG – Detecting Greenwashing with AI 🌱

 Authors: Mark Drozdov, Artur Sogomonyan and Ilya Belov

Mark Drozdov, Artur Sogomonyan, and Ilya Belov proudly secured second place at the AIM Hackathon 2024! Their project addressed the critical issue of greenwashing, with an ambitious goal to create a scalable tool that detects misleading sustainability claims in ESG reports. Leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and Large Language Models (LLMs), they took a meaningful step toward enhancing transparency in corporate sustainability practices.

Why greenwashing?

Greenwashing is a widespread problem. Companies often claim to be “sustainable” or “eco-friendly” without proper evidence. The developed solution aims to automatically detect greenwashing by analyzing ESG reports and assigning a trustworthiness score.

 

Key Types of Greenwashing To Detect:

  • Z1 Hidden Alternative Costs (Compromises)

  • Z2 Lack of Evidence in Communicating Marketing Activities

  • Z3 Lack of Accuracy

  • Z4 Lack of Transmission into Real Product Features

  • Z5 Lesser Evil

    The team focused on these five because they’re easily detectable in text. They found clear examples of each in H&M’s 2021 Sustainability Report, previously flagged by the Changing Markets Foundation for greenwashing.
     

How RAG Works:

  1. Document Upload: Users upload an ESG report, and the system extracts and cleans the text.

  2. Retrieval: RAG pulls relevant examples from our dataset, which contains pre-labeled greenwashing examples.

  3. Generation & Detection: The AI compares the new report to the retrieved examples and categorizes potential greenwashing.

  4. Highlighting & Scoring: The system highlights greenwashing sections and assigns a trustworthiness score.

  5. Continuous Improvement: With every new report uploaded, the system learns and improves.

Advantages and Future Improvements:

This tool can be used by investors, NGOs, auditors, and consumers to hold companies accountable for their sustainability claims. As more reports are uploaded, the system becomes smarter. Future improvements will include better fraud detection by integrating news and historical data.

At the end of the day, sustainability and digitalization can go hand in hand, and this tool will help us push towards a shared goal of making the world a better place.🌍✨

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