Shockingly, among the top 10 names on the Toxic 100 (click here to access the list) published last May, there are companies like General Electric (rank 4), Eastman Kodak (rank 5) and Alcoa (rank 9), which also appear on the “Global 100” list – supposedly the 100 most sustainable corporations in the world. The Global 100 Most Sustainable Companies list is the result of the collaborative work of Corporate Knights, a Canadian magazine on corporate social responsibility (CSR), and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, a socially responsible investing (SRI) research firm. Something seems to be wrong - the biggest polluters are the most sustainable. How can the same companies be on both lists?

The first Global 100 list, released last year in the World Economic Forum in Davos, was severely criticized in an AlterNet.org article by Paul Hawken, founder of the Natural Capital Institute. At that time, Hawken pointed out some of the unsustainable business practices of some of the companies topping the list. This year, the list has also provoked heated debates among environmentalists and green web pages and magazines. And we are putting in our two cents to let our readers know of the lack of credibility we give the Global 100 as well as the need for more transparency and dialog around how sustainability is measured for corporations.

The “Global 100” report is an alphabetically ordered list that shows only the names of 100 world corporations. There aren’t any indicators of how those names ended up on such a list and the methodology link only claims the results have been obtained “based on research and analysis by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors”. The companies are not given absolute sustainability rating nor any ranking since they are compared to their sector peers. Those included in the list are said to “have the best developed abilities, relative to their industry peers, to manage the environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities they face”.

On the other hand, the Corporate Toxics Information Project, at PERI, bases on information from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), which analyzes corporate releases of toxic chemicals and the resulting exposures of communities to pollution hazards. Their report shows a detailed ranking of polluters, based on their “toxic score”, an index that not only accounts for quantities of releases, but also for their level of toxicity and for population exposure. A link to each of the companies reveals the details behind them, such as all their facilities across the US, their exact location (by city and state) and their contribution to the overall company’s toxic score.
 

Apparently, research and analysis have led both of these organizations to opposite conclusions, surprisingly, on the same study cases. We need to remember that it is up to us to draw our own conclusions, and keep a critical eye toward the information that others provide. The world of corporate sustainability is full of “green-washing”, “blue-washing”, “local-washing” and more marketing nonsense - yet that should not lead us to miss the genuine, innovative companies that do exist. It is up to us to “translate the right to know into the right to clean air and water”, by making our own analysis of the information we receive.