CSR Reporting Efforts: Electronics, Financial, and Metals

December 19, 2008

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The Roberts Environmental Center of Claremont McKenna College released new Pacific Sustainability Index scores on the environmental and social reporting for the financial, electronics and metals sectors.

It scores companies based on the reporting, intent, and performance of environmental and social sustainability efforts.

In the electronics, semincoductor, and peripherals sector (pdf), Japanese brands Panasonic and Sony stood out, receiving “A+”s from the center and ranking above Toshiba and Royal Philips Electronics. (See image above.)

Rockwell Animation was the only US brand to rank in the top 10 – most US companies received grades in D and F range. Still, Rockwell had the highest social reporting scores, along with Philips,Toshiba, and Electrolux.

In the segment, “accountability” and “social demographic” were the most frequent environmental and social reporting topics, respectively, with “water” and “human rights” the most frequent performance topics, respectively.

Among banks, insurance, and diversified financial companies (pdf), Barclays (UK), Santanger Central Hispano (Spain), Citigroup (US), and Mizuho Financial Group (Japan) all received grades in the “A” range.

DZ Bank (Germany) and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China both received “F”s. The most amount of companies reported on energy performance in their sustainability reports.

In the 2006 reports on the metals sector (pdf), Rio Tinto Alcan (Canada) and Posco (South Korea) got “A+”s and Norway’s Norsk Hyrdo and the US company Alcoa trailed. Chinese companies Baosteel Group and China Minmetals were among the lowest scorers, just below US companies Nucor, Mueller Industries, and Aleris International.

Nippon Steel (Japan) stated high numerical goals, improved topics from its previous report, and was among those with the best performance reporting.