SEE What You Are Buying Into is a labelling scheme and a nascent social movement. It identifies businesses that are open and honest about how they deal with the Social, Environmental and Ethical (SEE) issues they face. At the same time it is a means for people to drive up standards of SEE policy and practice. As a social movement SEE has a simple goal: to make business accountable.

The SEE scheme seeks to make the world a better place by encouraging and enabling business to behave in a more socially responsible manner and by raising people's expectations. It has four key elements:

A. It sets high standards for participation. Businesses must be open and honest across a range of important SEE issues. They must be able to publicly justify their actions and commit to continuous improvement in working towards a more sustainable future.

B. It helps businesses to improve, enabling them to better understand SEE issues and challenges and, in turn, ways and means of responding to them. The evaluation process requires businesses to thoroughly consider their policies and practices and determine where and how they can be improved.

C. It rewards transparency and accountability. The SEE Logo enables people to identify responsible businesses; to buy from, work for and invest in organisations with which they share common values and philosophies.

D. It proves that business can be 'part of the solution'. SEE listed companies demonstrate it is possible to open, honest, trustworthy AND successful. This raises a very reasonable question: why can't ALL businesses be genuinely open and honest?

Our planet is in a mess. Our economic systems are failing. Social, Environmental and Ethical problems and dilemmas abound. If we are going to make the world a better place, we must work together. Solving global SEE problems requires human talent, energy and creativity from everyone; individuals, business, civil society and government. We need to move in the same direction, at the same time - and quickly. This requires unprecedented co-operation, collaboration and commitment.

This in turn requires proper dialogue and trust. Through dialogue, problems can be shared, good ideas swapped, bad practice identified and removed. Difficult SEE issues can be better identified and understood, from all sides. Trust is a prerequisite to proper dialogue and to engagement, partnership and the formation of strong and valuable ties.

BUT...as the research we have conducted over the last four years shows (also supported by the findings of others), many people have very considerable distrust of business. They simply don't believe what businesses say about sustainability, responsibility and good corporate citizenship.

Working together to make the world a better place requires a radical effort to remedy this trust deficit. SEE promotes dialogue and provides an unequivocal means for business to earn and maintain trust based on genuine openness and honesty.

No. CSR is the acronym for Corporate Social Responsibility. It is, unfortunately, a rather vague term so it means different things to different people. At one end of the spectrum CSR is seen to be a vital and valuable part of modern business where companies meet their social responsibilities and give something back to the community. At the other end, some regard CSR as a cynical ploy to create a veneer of responsibility and/or to resist attempts to legislate or regulate for greater business responsibility. Some commentators have wryly pointed out that the rise of CSR in recent years has coincided with accelerated environmental destruction and the demise of trust in corporate ethics.

SEE is the acronym for Social, Environmental and Ethical. The meanings of the words are applied in the normal, ordinary ways and cover the range of issues that affect businesses and wider society. Such SEE issues are a fact of life for everyone and every business, whether they engage in activities they call CSR or not.

'Greenwash' is corporate propaganda related to social, environmental and/or ethical issues and/or the overstatement or exaggeration of such commitments or achievements. Often it is used to disguise negative impacts or to market products and services with little SEE benefit.

Greenwash is bad for several reasons. It makes people cynical about all businesses and sceptical of all SEE claims, regardless of whether they are credible or not. It frustrates the efforts of genuinely responsible companies to connect with like-minded consumers. And it 'dumbs down' the issues and leads to a race to the bottom because it creates incentives for companies to invest in the appearance of being sustainable rather than actually operating sustainably.

Any organisation* can become SEE listed. While businesses were our starting point and remain our focus, we are also now taking a number of non-business organisations (for example governmental organisations, NGOs and various not-for-profits) through the SEE listing process. Click here to nominate any type of organisation that you would like to participate in the SEE scheme.

(* so long as it is prepared to be totally open and honest across a broad range of Social, Environmental and Ethical issues, fully answer the SEE Questionnaire, and publish its guaranteed responses for public scrutiny, comment and rating here on this website.)

People often ask whether certain businesses, such as arms manufacturers, tobacco companies, banks, supermarkets or oil companies, could gain a SEE listing. The short answer is that it is possible but probably unlikely, certainly in the short term. This stated, we very much hope to persuade such businesses to participate.

The SEE scheme demands openness and honesty across a broad range of SEE issues. Companies cannot pick and choose which parts of the SEE Questionnaire they wish to respond to. There are several questions that would be difficult, impossible or deeply embarrassing for some businesses to answer in public.

Many businesses don't offer information on SEE matters such as taxation or corruption, for example, or their impact on communities at home or indigenous peoples overseas. Currently few large global corporations have shown genuine ambition or interest in offering up reliable information for public scrutiny, comment and rating. Some do offer statements of intent, but these can be ambiguous and provide no definite guarantees regarding their operations.

However, we do not have to resign ourselves to this state of affairs. Any business can change and improve. So, if a company with a questionable track record can honestly demonstrate its progress and commitment to transparency by joining the SEE scheme, we will be delighted. We believe this would be a big step forward. The first such business to become SEE listed could be rightly recognised as a leader, an innovator and an agent for positive change.

Click here to nominate businesses - those you consider 'dodgy' or otherwise - that you would like to see participating in the SEE scheme.

Yes, with regard to openness and honesty. We do not require companies to meet specific criteria in terms of policy or performance - such as always sourcing locally, or supporting fair trade, or recognising unions in the workplace for example - but we do require they meet the highest standards of disclosure: that they are fully transparent and accountable on a comprehensive range of SEE issues.

This sets the SEE scheme apart. These social, environmental and ethical issues are big, complex and always in flux. A tick box approach - do you do this, do you do that? - is too simplistic to reliably reveal how a company is performing. Such an approach often makes it possible for a business to 'tick all the right boxes' but still fail to operate in genuinely responsible ways.

The questions in the SEE Questionnaire have been developed in partnership with expert organisations who share their knowledge of the topic and their experience of best corporate policy and practice. Each respondent company must explain, in its own words, how it deals with SEE matters as they affect its business. The published responses have to be kept up to date because circumstances change. Being SEE listed is a continuing exploration of, and a response to, evolving circumstances and changing SEE problems.

In summary, the SEE scheme sets a robust minimum standard in terms of honesty, openness and trustworthiness across a broad range of important topics, for business and for society as a whole.

A conscientious and confident business with a strong understanding of SEE issues can admit to a few weaknesses as well as highlight its strengths. It can express an intention to learn and improve. In so doing it can explain and - crucially - justify its actions. It therefore simply does not need to lie. This is the sort of company participating in the SEE scheme.

However, given that gaining a SEE listing builds trust and enhances business reputation, all kinds of businesses inquire about joining the scheme. But, while some may initially think SEE offers a quick fix to their reputation problems, it soon becomes evident that this is not the case.

Rather than just ticking boxes, the SEE Questionnaire requires each business to describe what it does, in its own words. Given the level of detail required, and the strict answering guidelines that accompany each question, the room for respondent companies to bluff, mislead or fudge answers is very narrow indeed. Over 35 questions, it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible. This is evident on close inspection of the questions and the evaluation process. Those few companies which have raised our suspicions as to their ability to be open and honest on a range of SEE issues have vanished from the scene very quickly.

Our legal Terms and Conditions demand that SEE listed companies guarantee their responses as accurate, complete and verifiable. SEE Ltd has a rigorous and no-nonsense approach to examining any answers that are challenged. All business information on this website is publicly policed. If it is called into question, the onus is on the company to prove its information, quickly and irrefutably. If it fails to do this it will be de-listed from the SEE website and its licence to carry the SEE Logo will be revoked. This is all clearly stated in our Terms.

Ultimately you decide if companies' answers are good enough.

The process of evaluating company responses to the SEE Questionnaire prior to their publication, according to the questions' answering guidelines, is set out in our Terms and Conditions.

All SEE listed company responses are available for public scrutiny and open to comment and rating. Anyone is able to rate company responses for clarity and quality and to comment on the appropriateness of the policies or practices that the company describes. If you do not think a business is doing enough, if you have other ideas and suggestions, or think they are doing really well, please use the commenting and rating features to say so. Bear in mind that your comments and suggestions do help businesses learn and improve. Encouragement as well as criticism is gratefully received.

SEE Ltd was started as a business - as a company limited by shares - to create a 'credible CSR platform'. With experience our ambitions have changed. But, as the SEE scheme has developed, the reasons for remaining as a business have increased rather than diminished.

Being a for-profit business is now an important matter of principle. There is no better way to understand:

• how challenging it is to make a profit while making responsible choices; and
• that competing objectives must somehow be balanced and compromise is often unavoidable.

Crucially, because we operate according to the same rules as all other businesses, we can state with confidence and authority that:

• it is reasonable to expect business to be open and honest;
• transparency and accountability are business benefits not costs; and
• a pro-prosperity, pro-profit philosophy does not require an anti-planet, anti-people approach.

No, not remotely. SEE Ltd is a company with the very clear aim of making the world a better place. Businesses only participate in the SEE scheme because it is beneficial for them to do so. This in turn relies on all our other stakeholders having confidence in what we do and how we do it. If the SEE scheme was about making money, it would simply not be credible. And if it was not credible, it would have no value and businesses would not participate in it.

The SEE scheme requires money to operate and develop. We have raised a significant amount of patient capital, over the years, to build it up. We do expect to be able to generate a profit at some stage. However, whenever we do, it would damage our credibility - and therefore the viability of the scheme and the business - if it was not put, at least in part, to inventive and innovative uses. For example, we are already working towards selling debentures to SEE Partners; this would see future profits exchanged for partners' support in promoting the SEE scheme. In all its undertakings, SEE Ltd expects to be held to the very highest levels of scrutiny and to account for what it does.

SEE Ltd's day-to-day business is operating and further developing the SEE scheme and brand. Mostly we:

• research and develop the SEE Questionnaire with the SEE Partners to ensure the questions are always relevant;
• propose ties and build relationships with new SEE Partners;
• maintain the secure, bespoke online tool that enables companies to answer the SEE Questionnaire;
• use our knowledge and experience to help companies better understand the SEE issues they face and help improve their policies and practices;
• advise and support companies in creating accurate, appropriate and complete responses to the SEE Questionnaire;
• publish company responses and information on this website for public scrutiny, monitoring and comment;
• monitor SEE listed companies' progress in improving their SEE practices and policies; and
• promote brand recognition to achieve our mission - to make the world a better place.