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For nearly 30 years, pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb has announced that it has set and achieved ambitious targets for energy and greenhouse gas emissions. These days, these goals include being “carbon neutral” by 2040.

Equipment maker Caterpillar, Texas Instruments, Exxon Mobil, and The Walt Disney Company have made similar claims about the sustainability of their operations and set targets for reducing emissions.

But these lofty corporate goals are missing something: accounting for significant emissions from supply chains or waste from their products. For some companies, these can add up to 95 percent of their total contribution to greenhouse gases.

A closer look at the claims made in marketing and investor presentations that Institutional America is accelerating efforts to combat the climate crisis reveals that many of these claims are quite limited and do not harm global supply, the largest source of carbon emissions. chains that power the modern economy and have become dinner table conversation amid this year’s major disruptions.

Emissions from supply chains and waste are “extremely significant”, said Tom Cumberlege, deputy director of The Carbon Trust, which works with companies, governments and others to create carbon reduction plans. “Any company that doesn’t measure the entire value chain is not coping with a significant part of its impact.”

As the United Nations’ annual global warming conference in Glasgow begins, companies are reaffirming their role as responsible environmental stewards. Heads of state, diplomats and activists meet face to face to set new targets for reducing emissions from fossil fuels, in hopes of preventing the average global temperature from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. Scientists warn that failure to do so could lead to disastrous consequences from global warming.

But despite commitments to aid, many companies are still taking steps to minimize carbon. These include installing solar panels at headquarters, designing more energy efficient stores, and tracking commutes and business trips by their employees.

But emissions from factories that sell sneakers on e-commerce sites or farms that produce meat and milk sold on grocery store shelves continue to rise in some cases.

This presents challenges for consumers who want to spend money on sustainable goods and services, and for investors who increasingly want to finance companies that don’t harm the planet, helping them.

Angel Hsu, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and founder of Data-Driven EnviroLab, built a database using corporate climate disclosures and other sources and found that 1,858 out of 2,000 companies have committed or committed to being net zero. However, only 210 of companies reported emissions from their supply chains or consumer waste.

In another analysis, Professor Hsu found that roughly two-thirds of companies that say they are on track to meet the emissions reduction targets set for 2030 have set low or unpretentious targets. “I’m generally skeptical of a company at this point that says it has achieved or is achieving its goals,” said Professor Hsu.

Amazon said emissions from indirect sources, for example, rose 15 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year. The company noted that when its emissions are measured against its increased sales, its carbon footprint is reduced. But some climate experts say this calculation, called carbon intensity, hides the fact that the company is still producing increasing amounts of carbon.

“The planet doesn’t care about carbon density,” said Roland Geyer, professor of industrial ecology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, “The climate is being damaged by absolute emissions.”

Walmart said it’s difficult to accurately measure the carbon contributions of many of its suppliers, and the company hasn’t disclosed whether total emissions in its supply chain are increasing or decreasing each year. About 95 percent of business-related carbon emissions come from the supply chain, the company said.

The retailer reported that it has set a voluntary emission reduction target for its suppliers and that approximately 1,500 companies are making progress towards the target.

But Walmart has stopped asking suppliers to reduce emissions. Instead, if they report a certain level of progress, Walmart rewards them with labels like “Giga-Gurus” and “Sparking Change Suppliers.”

“We have internal dashboards that show which suppliers are participating and who are the leaders,” said Zach Freeze, senior director of strategic initiatives and sustainability at Walmart. “Traders are competitive. They want to be on the leaderboard.”

More and more companies are trying to measure the problem. Alberto Carrillo Pineda, co-founder of the initiative, said the number of companies that voluntarily submitted their emissions reports and reduction targets to the Science-Based Goals initiative, a nonprofit organization that evaluates and approves company goals, has doubled this year to over 2,000.

Last week, the organization released criteria that companies must then meet to reach their “net zero” targets, and these include massive reductions in emissions from their supply chains. But Mr Carrillo Pineda noted that companies provide the data voluntarily, and therefore “there is no complete guarantee that a company will always include every emission”.

Eventually, companies may have to do this. The Securities and Exchange Commission is weighing whether more robust disclosures are needed from companies about their emissions, citing growing demand for greater transparency from investors.

In July, SEC chairman Gary Gensler said he sought advice from his employees on starting to require companies to disclose emissions produced by their suppliers in order to give investors a full accounting of their carbon footprints.

“Companies can disclose their plans to become ‘net zero’, but cannot provide any information that stands behind this claim,” Mr Gensler said in a speech this summer.

But forcing companies to more fully disclose their carbon footprint is only part of the challenge. Significantly reducing emissions in supply chains can fundamentally conflict with business models.

Let’s take the retail industry. The more products retailers sell, the more emissions they generate from the production and transportation of those products. Target said sales during the pandemic, which increased $15 billion in 2020 and grew more than overall sales growth in the previous 11 years, contributed to a 16.5 percent increase in emissions from its supply chain.

“The historic challenges and unique retail needs driven by 2020 dynamics have had an undeniable impact on our business while meeting growing consumer demand,” Target said in its latest sustainability report. “In turn, we also saw the increasing impact of our emissions.”

Still, Target says it’s keeping its commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2040, including its supply chain.

“These increases do not deter us from our net zero commitment or our continued work to create strategies to prevent, reduce and eliminate emissions from our value chain,” the company said.

Professor Geyer said the pressure on companies to continually increase their profits and sales makes such commitments unrealistic. He has recently written a book called “Less Work,” in which he argues that if companies really want to help the climate, they should pull back on growth or make other radical changes to their businesses. Such transformations no longer seem impossible, as demonstrated by the auto industry’s transition to electric vehicles.

“The biggest myth in the world of corporate sustainability is the ‘win-win’ idea that a company can maximize its profits and still remain environmentally friendly,” Professor Geyer said in an interview. “We have 30 years of data that we can examine and say that it’s not working.”