By: Kevin Wilhelm, Marisa Grant, Duschka Fowler-Dunning
Who is the most sustainable company? I get asked this question often in my consulting, teaching and speaking roles. The reality is that every year a number of different companies and magazines try to come up with an answer through a variety of rankings that involve sustainability – from Newsweek’s Green Rankings, to Fortune’s Best Companies to Work for, to Corporate Knights Global 100.
This year, we looked at the following 8 different rankings, with 6 positive and 2 that are negative:
 Newsweek Green Rankings
 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work
 Corporate Register Best Corporate
Citizens
For
 Corporate Knights Global 100
 The CDP Leadership Index
 Political Economy Research Institute’s
(PERI) Toxic 100
 11 Worst Companies to Work For
 Climate Counts
Some of the results were as expected and others were surprising.
Who scored best across all the rankings?
 Intel ranks the highest from our analysis; being the only company to appear on five positive rankings and no negative rankings.
 Cisco Systems, Accenture, Microsoft and Starbucks appeared on 4 positive ranking and on zero negative lists.
 All 5 of the aforementioned companies are listed on the Fortune 100 Best Places to
Work, and have proven to be environmentally conscious, many of them receiving awards and praise in the environmental community.
 Intel and Accenture are the only two out of the top 10 of Newsweek’s Green rankings to also appear on the Corporate Knights Global 100.
Comparison of 100 Best Places to Work vs. Newsweek Green Rankings:
 There are 13 companies that appear on both lists.All of the top 5 performing companies:
Intel, Cisco, Accenture, Starbucks and Microsoft appear on both.
Comparison of 100 Best Places to Work vs. Corporate Knights Global 100
 All of the top rated companies,except Starbucks are Microsoft, appeared on both.
What is most interesting to the reader?
 GE has received a lot of positive publicity for their “ecomagination” campaign that has significantly increased the company’s profits and public image. However, while the company appears on the Newsweek Green, Climate Counts, CR Best Corporate Citizens and the Global 100, it also shows upas number 3 on the Toxic 100
What defies logic?
Companies that appear on both the Newsweek Green as well as the Toxic 100:

 7 companies appear on both Newsweek Green Rankings & Toxic 100 Air Polluters:
General Electric, Pfeizer, Boeing, Ford Motor Company, Northrop Grumman, General
Motors & Goodyear Tire and Rubber.
What’s missing with these rankings?
 It is understandable that the focus remains on larger, public companies, due to the fact that it would be costly and time intensive to collect data from the smaller, private companies.
 The rankings use fairly different methodologies whichmakes comparing companies difficult
 We feel it is important to dig deeper to see the companies that may be doing wonderful things, but are not included on sustainability rankings. o Case in point, take companies like Method, Tom’s of Maine or Interface, who are sustainability leaders in their different industries but do not appear on these ratings stands out as shocking.
 Employment of many different selection criteria; making comparing these companies difficult not only for industry analysts, but also impassioned consumers, employees interested in working for companies making a real difference and investors.
Researched by:
Kevin Wilhelm, CEO of Sustainable Business Consulting
Marisa Gant, MBA,
Duschka Fowler-Dunning, MBA