by Shane Henson — February 3, 2012—Corporate Knights, a Toronto-based company that promotes and educates on clean capitalism, recently released its eighth annual Global 100 list of the most sustainable large corporations in the world.
Toby Heaps, CEO of Corporate Knights, says, “[I]n a year in which Wall Street was occupied and capitalism became a bad word, the Global 100 companies serve as ambassadors for a better, cleaner kind of capitalism which, it also turns out, is more profitable.”
The Global 100 was recently recognized for its industry-leading standard of transparency and objectivity by a meta-study of corporate sustainability rankings.
The 2012 Global 100 tapped intelligence from the world’s largest sustainability research alliance put together by Legg Mason’s Global Currents Investment Management and Phoenix Global Advisors LLC to isolate the 10 percent of companies from a universe of 3,500 global stocks, which were then transparently ranked based on 11 indicators. The indicators used were energy productivity, carbon productivity; water productivity; leadership diversity; CEO-to-average worker pay; tax paid; safety productivity sales; sustainability remuneration; innovation capacity; R&D/sales; and employee turnover (new category).
The Global 100 includes companies from 22 countries encompassing all sectors of the economy, with collective annual sales in excess of $3.02 trillion, and 5,285,645 million employees.
Among the 22 countries, the United Kingdom led the way with 16 Global 100 companies (five more than in 2011). Japan followed with 11 (down from 19 in 2011). France and the United States tied for third place, with each claiming the headquarters of eight Global 100 companies. Rounding out the top ten scoring countries were: Australia (seven), Canada (six), Germany (five) Switzerland (five), Denmark (four), Netherlands (four), Norway (four), Sweden (four), and Brazil (three). Sixty-eight per cent of the 2011 companies remained on the list in 2012.
The 10 ten of the top 100 companies on the list are:
- Novo Nordisk of A/S Denmark, within the Pharmaceuticals Biotechnology & Life Sciences sector
- Natura Cosmeticos SA of Brazil, within the Household & Personal Products sector
- Statoil ASA of Norway, within the Energy sector
- Novozymes A/S, of Denmark, within the Materials sector
- ASML Holding NV of the Netherlands, within the Semiconductors & Semiconductor Equipment sector
- BG Sector plc of the United Kingdom, within the Energy sector
- Vivendi SA of France, within the Telecommunication Services sector
- Umicore SA/NV of Belgium, within the Materials sector
- Norsk Hydro ASA of Norway, within the Materials sector
- Atlas Copco AB of Sweden, within the Capital Goods sector
- Natura Cosmeticos SA of Brazil, within the Household & Personal Products sector
