GE Tops List of Most Sustainable Companies

Corporate Knights has announced its sixth annual Global 100 list of the most sustainable large corporations in the world at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The top five leaders in sustainability are General Electric, PG&E, Tnt Nv, H&M Hennes & Mauritz, and Nokia.

The Global 100 includes companies from 24 countries encompassing all sectors with a collective value of $4 trillion and three million employees. They were evaluated according to how effectively they managed environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities relative to their industry peers.

The UK came out on top with 21 Global 100 companies (one more than in 2009), followed by the United States with 12 (down from 20 in 2009). Canada and Australia tied for third with nine companies each (up from five, and four respectively).

Rounding out the top ten scoring countries were Switzerland (six), France (five), Japan (five), Germany (four), while Brazil, Denmark, Finland and Sweden each registered three Global 100 constituents. Fifty percent of the companies were on the list last year.

General Electric earned the top rank, bolstered by its industry leading ratio of sales to waste, strong board gender diversity, and a doubling of its carbon productivity (sales/tons of total CO2e) from 2006 to 2008, reducing total carbon emissions from 10.8 million tons to 6.5 million tons, while increasing sales from $150 billion to $181 billion.

Click here to view the top 100 list by company, ranking and country.

Here are the rankings for 2009 and 2008.