Sustainable Companies: What They Are and Their Global Ranking

The global push launched in 2015 to achieve sustainable development worldwide (the SDGs) has raised awareness and interest among people and governments about the important role the private sector plays in reaching these goals.

Consumers increasingly demand that companies be held more accountable for their impact on the environment, and in some parts of the world companies that pollute excessively or use resources inefficiently are even penalized. At the same time, companies that the public perceives as sustainable are rewarded.

Should companies help the environment, or is that the consumers’ responsibility?

People are demanding not only quality products and services from companies but also a sustainable relationship with society and the environment. How important is sustainable development in a company?

A sustainable company, or sustainable business, has a minimal negative impact on the environment at the local or global level. It is a business that strives to meet the triple bottom line: economy, society and the environment. Put simply, these are companies that help the environment or at least do everything they can to avoid harming it.

This means the company seeks to maximize its economic profits while minimizing negative externalities on the environment and emphasizing its social responsibility. Sustainability in a company creates value for consumers, society and the environment.

In general, companies can be considered sustainable if they meet the following criteria:

1. It incorporates sustainability principles into every decision it makes.
2. It offers environmentally friendly goods or services that replace demand for more harmful alternatives.
3. It uses greener production methods than its competitors.
4. It is committed to following environmental principles in its business activities.

For a company, being sustainable means being able to meet the current needs of the market without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This implies that a sustainable company engages in environmentally friendly, or “green,” activities to ensure that all its processes, products and manufacturing activities address current environmental concerns while maximizing its profits.

To become sustainable, companies need to develop innovations that reduce their negative impact on society and the environment. Many of these innovations are the company’s own projects that change the way it produces or create a new service or product that is friendlier to the environment and the community. These innovations must integrate economic interests with social and environmental ones and bring about changes that go beyond the traditional criteria of competitiveness and economic success.

Every year, Corporate Knights magazine presents its ranking of the 100 most sustainable companies in the world. In its 2015 edition, the list only considered companies with a market capitalization above US$2 billion (recent editions use a revenue threshold of US$1 billion instead), so the companies that appeared on it were not only sustainability leaders but also among the largest. Only one Latin American company made that ranking: Brazil’s Natura Cosméticos, in 44th place.

For its 2015 edition, the magazine screened companies using four criteria:

1. Sustainability disclosure: companies must disclose most of their actions, in line with the trends in the economic sector they belong to.
2. F-score: the company’s financial position must be positive.
3. Economic sector: tobacco and weapons producers are not considered.
4. Sanctions: the environmental fines or penalties the company has had to pay.

The most sustainable company in the 2015 ranking was Biogen Idec (renamed Biogen in March 2015), an American company whose therapies treat people with multiple sclerosis and other degenerative diseases. It is no coincidence that Biogen is American: 20 of the 100 companies on the list were from the United States, which made it the leading country on the list, followed by Canada and France with 12 companies each.

Most of the companies on the list are not well known to the average consumer, although some are. Notable examples include Adidas (3), Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) (6), L’Oréal (14), Johnson & Johnson (18) and Unilever (22).

According to the Forbes México report “Firmas con Responsabilidad Ambiental” (Environmentally Responsible Companies), published in January 2017, some of the most sustainable companies in Mexico were:

Bio Pappel, Nestlé, Grupo Herdez, Nissan Mexicana, Grupo Bimbo, Coca-Cola FEMSA, Grupo Lala, Avon Cosmetics Manufacturing, Continental Automotive and Arca Continental.

The report highlights the efforts of some environmentally committed companies operating in Mexico to improve their internal efficiency and sustainability.

Although this index is not conclusive in determining which company is more sustainable, since it is still unclear how much pollution each company generates, it does show which companies are making some kind of effort toward sustainability.

Sources:

• ScienceDirect
• ScienceDirect 2
• Wikipedia
• Corporate Knights
• Forbes

In the 2024 Corporate Knights Global 100 index, first place went to Sims Ltd., an Australian recycling company and a circular-economy pioneer.

Last updated: September 26, 2026