Indices and ranking news and comment

March 25, 2011

SustainAbility Rates the Raters across a broad range of categories

Phase three of SustainAbilitys Rate the Raters project was released in February and compares and evaluates 21 corporate sustainability ratings. The ratings assessed include the Carbon Disclosure Project, Dow Jones Sustainability Index, EIRIS, FTSE4Good Index Series, Global 100 and the Good Guide. 13 criteria were used across 4 categories: Governance & Transparency, Quality of Inputs, Research Process and Outputs and the rating organisations were categorised as strong, moderate or weak for each category. Key findings include: the value of transparent methodologies in creating trust and thus value for sustainability ratings; the importance of keeping ratings simple and easy to understand; and the value of forward looking ratings that incorporate not only past performance but potential for positive future sustainability performance.

Contact: SustainAbility
www.sustainability.com

UK companies ranked by emissions and disclosure levels

The UK’s largest 100 companies have been ranked according to their greenhouse gas emissions and disclosure levels for the first time by the Environmental Investment Organisation. The ET UK 100 Carbon Ranking bases its scores on disclosure of scope 1 and 2 emissions according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the internationally recognised standard for emissions reporting. In the number one spot is insurance firm Amlin, with a carbon intensity of 1.21 million tones of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) per $million of turnover, closely followed by Aviva with 1.36. Only firms both disclosing and verifying their emissions were included in the ranking’s top category: 66% of the 100 publicly disclose their data but only half of these also independently verify their reported emissions.

Contact: Environmental Investment Organisation
www.eio.org.uk

Ethical perception rankings released

Swiss company Covalence have released their new EthicalQuote rankings, a system that scores companies on how they are “perceived in the ethical field”. 581 companies are scored across 18 sectors, using 45 criteria including environment and waste management, social utility of products, labour standards and human rights. The EthicalQuote methodology involves assessing news and opinion items from the media, blogs, non-profits and companies from 2002 up to December 2010. This year’s leaders include IT firms IBM, Intel and Cisco at 1st, 2nd and 4th respectively and fast moving consumer goods companies PepsiCo, Unilever, Kraft and P&G at 3rd, 5th, 6th and 7th in the rankings respectively.

Contact: Covalence
www.covalence.ch

SAM publishes 2011 Sustainability Yearbook

SAM, the Swiss investment group focused exclusively on sustainability investing, has published its 7th annual Sustainability Yearbook, in collaboration with PwC. The Yearbook lists the top 15% of companies, representing the best long-term value creation and economic, environmental and social performance. ‘Sector Leaders’ and ‘Sector Movers’ are recognised in the report, the latter being awarded to the most improved firm in each sector. Gold, Silver and Bronze awards are also given to impressive sustainability performers, with the 2011 Yearbook awarding 103 SAM Gold Class awards, 92 SAM Silver Class and 77 SAM Bronze Class. Spanish companies achieved the highest relative representation: out of the companies eligible for inclusion in the Yearbook, only 9% of US companies are represented, compared to 65% of Spanish.

Contact: SAM
www.sam-group.com

Corporate Knights announces global ‘Good Guys’ list

Corporate Knights, the magazine for ‘clean capitalism’, announced its 7th annual Global 100 list of the most sustainable companies in the world in Davos in February. The Global 100 uses the most sustainable 10% of companies and ranks them based on 10 indicators. The country with the best representation in the list is Japan, with 19 Global 100 firms, up from 5 in 2010. The US has 13 and the UK 11, down from 14 and 21 in 2010 respectively. According to Corporate Knights, since its commencement in early 2005, the Global 100 has financial outperformed its benchmark, the MSCI All Country World Index, by more than 16%, with a total return of 54.95%.

Contact: Corporate Knights, Global 100
www.corporateknights.ca, www.global100.org

Good Guide releases ethical phone ranking

The Good Guide released new rankings of the environmental, health and social impacts of mobile phones in February, to add to the US firm’s growing collection of responsible consumer product rankings. The results include scores for 596 different mobile phone models from 16 manufacturers. Nokia scores particularly well with 26 out of the top 30 models, most of which received a score of around 7.6 out of 10. Another high scorer is Samsung’s Blue Earth phone which received a high environmental score for its energy-efficient charger, use of eco materials and elimination of brominated flame retardants and PVC. The lowest-ranking company is Research in Motion, whose BlackBerry phones earned a 3.3 rating on average, the lowest of all phones scored.

Contact: Good Guide
www.goodguide.com

Corporate Responsibility Magazine announces ‘100 Best Corporate Citizens List’

Corporate Responsibility Magazine unveiled its 12th annual ‘100 Best Corporate Citizens List’ on 2 March and revealed a surge in the transparency of US companies. The List analyses and ranks the publically available information of US companies using 324 data points across seven categories: environment, climate change, employee relations, human rights, governance, finance and philanthropy. The top 10 were: Johnson Controls, Campbell Soup, IBM, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, Mattel, 3M Company, Accenture, Kimberly-Clark, HP and Nike. The findings included a “meteoric” rise in the transparency of companies this year. ‘Red cards’ for significant negative impacts, excluding companies from the list, were given to Allergen, for misbranding Botox, Exxon Mobil for contaminating groundwater and Pfizer for promoting off-label drug usage.

Contact: Corporate Responsibility Magazine

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