What Defines the World’s Most Sustainable Company?

Business sustainability supporters and critics continue to debate the ability to link environmental and social responsibility to business profitability. Without a definitive financial incentive, companies have historically been unreceptive to the idea of integrating sustainability concepts into core business practices without a definitive return on their investment. However, recent trends and business rankings indicate that the business world may be changing their view.

Within Marc Gunther’s post, Ratings, rankings and the world’s most sustainable company, we take a tour of the recent Top 100 as defined by the Canadian magazine Corporate Knights in their 8th release of their business sustainability honors. The list was developed from the measure of environmental and social impacts in the areas of energy, carbon, waste and water productivity, diversity and employee turnover, safety and, interestingly, the ratio between CEO and average worker pay.

While these measures do not appear overly surprising or may even seem too straight forward, our sustainability consulting can appreciate the link to company financials. Tying impacts to economic performance, our sustainability consulting feels these results add weight to a comprehensive business sustainability measure.

“Interestingly, these more sustainable companies have outperformed their peers. In 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.” -Toby Heaps, CEO of Corporate Knights

At Taiga Company, our professional consulting practice acknowledges the business sustainability leaders who define economic links between sustainability concepts and business value drivers. Within our own work, we provide information and professional consulting services to assist corporate and small business leadership build business sustainability strategies and continuous management plans.