The Most Sustainable Companies in the World

Photo: iStockphoto/RomoloTavani

We’ve spent the past decade developing, ramping up, rolling out and utilizing business and social sustainability plans across the world, including hundreds of thousands of American companies large and small. They range from composting office waste to buying fleets of hybrid trucks, but sustainability is on the minds of most.

Which begs the question: Which companies have proven to be the most sustainable large companies heading into the 2020s?

As the world’s economic and business leaders headed to Davos in January for the World Economic Forum, Canada’s Corporate Knights magazine announced its 15 th annual Global 100 report, assessing 7,500 companies earning $1 billion or more per year on their sustainability initiatives. These include the areas of leadership, clean product revenue, performance regarding carbon and waste, and overall sustainability.

Topping the list for 2019 is Chr. Hansen Holding, a 145-year-old Dutch bioscience firm that derives more than 80% of its revenue from developing natural solutions to preserve yogurt and milk, protecting crops with natural bacteria instead of pesticides, and finding alternatives to antibiotics for animals.

“It’s not a consumer-facing company,” Corporate Knights founder and president Toby Heaps said at the announcement. “But it probably impacts a lot of the calories of hundreds of millions of people every day and makes the food that they’re consuming safer.”

Finishing second was Kering SA, a French firm better known by the consumer brands it owns — Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Alexander McQueen, among others. Kering sources more than 40% of its products from certified sustainable sources, a percentage that is increasing annually. In addition, in a corporate world where women occupy less than 20% of Board of Director seats, Kering’s board is comprised of 60% women.

In an interesting result, a petroleum and gas company, Neste Corporation of Finland, ranked third in the Global 100. They’ve shifted gears into products like renewable biofuels in the past five years; today, more than 50% of Neste’s investments are focused on these products. The biofuel business now represents half of Neste’s profits and 25% of its revenue – a great ROI result. Investors like it, too: Neste’s shares have risen 300% since making this shift, compared to a 127% return for Global 100 companies on the MSCI All Country World Index.  (Prologis)

The remainder of the Global 100’s Top 10 include: 4. Orsted (Denmark) 5. GlaxoSmithKline plc (U.K.) 6. Prologis, Inc. (USA) 7. Umicore (Belgium) 8. Banco de Brasil S.A. (Brazil) 9. Shinhan Financial Group Co. (South Korea) 10. Taiwan Semiconductor (Taiwan)

Other U.S. Companies include: 13. McCormick & Company 14. Cisco Systems 17. Analog Devices, Inc. 32. Ecolab, Inc. 39. HP, Inc. 40. Comerica Incorporated 46. Eli Lilly and Company 48. Autodesk, Inc. 51. KeyCorp 52. Alphabet, Inc. (owners of Google) 53. MetLife, Inc. 55. Danaher Corporation 59. PNC Financial Services 63. Bank of America Corp. 66. Ingersoll-Rand Plc 69. Tesla, Inc. 70. Itron, Inc. 81. Workday, Inc. 85. Campbell Soup Company 87. ANSYS, Inc. 90. VMWare, Inc.