The World's Most Sustainable Companies 2016

BMW is the world’s most sustainable company this year. The company earned particularly high marks for “efficient use of water, energy, and lack of waste,” .

BMW, the Munich-based maker of luxury cars and motorcycles, is the world’s most sustainable company this year, according to a ranking released this week by Toronto-based media company Corporate Knights.

The company earned particularly high marks for “efficient use of water, energy, and lack of waste,” as well as its “responsible approach to paying taxes, large innovation investments, low employee turnover, and low CEO-to-average-worker pay ratio.”

Each year, Corporate Knights looks at companies around the world to determine which are getting the most out of their capital, maximizing employee performance, and making careful use of resources. Those seen here are achieving top performance, and make the 2016 Global 100.

The data-driven ranking is released annually at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and is based on publicly-disclosed information from 4,353 global mid-, large-, and mega-cap companies with a market cap upwards of $2 billion. Companies are then evaluated across 12 “key performance indicators” (KPIs) that measure an organization’s management of resources, employees, and finances.

“Global 100 companies demonstrate ambition and achievement on a broad spectrum of indicators. Striving to make the world a better place, they are where people want to work, firms we want to buy from and invest in for the long term,” said Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps.

This year, 87% of the companies on this list provided a “monetary bonus” to execs that met sustainability goals.

In terms of resources, Corporate Knights looks at a company’s energy use, emissions, water use, and waste generated. To evaluate a company’s financial sustainability, factors including revenue, EBITDA, and the ratio of CEO compensation to the average employee’s compensation are taken into consideration.

And to determine the sustainability of a company’s employee management practices, Corporate Knights considers reports of fatalities or lost time, turnover, diversity in leadership, and female representation on the board and in management.

The ranking exclusively considers characteristics that can be measured quantitatively and does not factor in a company’s exposure to risks that cannot be quantified and are thus subjective.

Certain indicators are prioritized over others across industries. For example, safety rankings are not particularly important to banks, as the financial sector work doesn’t pose physical danger. But safety performance is an important measure of sustainability in the transportation industry, where physical well-being can be at stake.

The U.S. claims the greatest swath of the list with 19 companies (down from 20 in 2015), including Coca-Cola, Intel, Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, and General Mills. France contributes the second most companies, 11, including Dassault Systems, L’Oreal, BNP Paribas, and Renault.

Brazil, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, and Switzerland each claim two representatives, China, Italy, and Portugal, one.

Media

Taxonomy

• Sustainable Economy
• Sustainable Water Resource Management
• Sustainability Management
• Corporate Sustainability
• Sustainable Operation Certifications