Green
Mapped: The Countries With the Most Sustainable Corporate Giants
Mapped: The Countries With the Most Sustainable Corporate Giants
From plastic-filled oceans to unequal pay, sustainability is a hot topic these days. Many people are wondering how we’ll move the needle on these important issues, and the business world is being pressured to take action.
Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose. To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.
— Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager
Which of the world’s largest companies are stepping up to the plate on these issues?
The Global 100 Index
Today’s visualization pulls data from Corporate Knight’s 2019 Global 100 report, which ranks the most sustainable corporations in the world.
Any public company with revenue of at least $1B USD is screened for various factors such as sufficient sustainability reporting. The resulting corporations are scored on an industry-specific mix of performance metrics in the following areas:
- Resource Management
- Employee Management
- Financial Management
- Clean Revenue
- Supplier Performance
The final ranking represents the top companies from each sector, with the number from each sector based on the relative size of its market capitalization.
Sustainable Corporations by Country
Here’s all the countries that had companies on the list:
Country | Number of Companies on the Global 100 |
---|---|
United States | 22 |
France | 11 |
Japan | 8 |
Finland | 7 |
United Kingdom | 7 |
Canada | 6 |
Germany | 5 |
Brazil | 4 |
Denmark | 4 |
Sweden | 4 |
South Korea | 3 |
Spain | 3 |
Australia | 2 |
Belgium | 2 |
Italy | 2 |
Netherlands | 2 |
Singapore | 2 |
Switzerland | 2 |
Taiwan | 2 |
Austria | 1 |
Ireland | 1 |
The U.S. tops the list with 22 companies – far more than any other country. European countries also dominate the list and have 51 companies on the G100 overall. Notably, the populous countries of India and China have no representation on the list.
The Top 10 Companies
So, which individual companies made the list? Here’s a snapshot of the star players:
Rank | Company | Country | Industry | Overall Score |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Chr. Hansen Holding A/S | Denmark | Food or other Chemical Agents | 82.99% |
2 | Kering SA | France | Apparel and Accessories | 81.55% |
3 | Neste Corporation | Finland | Petroleum Refineries | 80.92% |
4 | Ørsted | Denmark | Wholesale Power | 80.13% |
5 | GlaxoSmithKline plc | United Kingdom | Biopharmaceuticals | 79.41% |
6 | Prologis, Inc. | United States | Real Estate Investment Trusts | 79.12% |
7 | Umicore | Belgium | Primary Metals Products | 79.05% |
8 | Banco do Brasil S.A. | Brazil | Banks | 78.15% |
9 | Shinhan Financial Group Co. | South Korea | Banks | 77.75% |
10 | Taiwan Semiconductor | Taiwan | Semiconductor Equipment | 77.71% |
Chr. Hansen Holding A/S leapt from #66 in 2018 to the top spot this year. According to CEO Mauricio Graber, the company develops “cultures, enzymes, probiotics and natural colors for a rich variety of foods, confectionery, beverages, dietary supplements and even animal feed.”
A staggering 82% of Chr. Hansen’s revenue contributes to the United Nations’ Sustainability Goals. The company is using good bacteria to reduce antibiotic use, crop pesticides, and food waste. Over the last three years, the company has reduced yogurt waste by 400,000 tonnes.
What’s in it for Companies?
While societal pressure is certainly one motivating factor, Harvard Business Review notes that corporate sustainability has many benefits:
- Drives competitive advantage through stakeholder engagement
- Improves risk management
- Fosters innovation
- Improves financial performance
- Builds customer loyalty
- Attracts and engages employees
It’s clear that sustainability is a strong differentiator in the business community. The world’s largest – and smartest – companies are leading the charge towards a greener, more equitable future.
Green
The Carbon Emissions of Gold Mining
Gold has a long history as a precious metal, but just how many carbon emissions does mining it contribute to?


The Carbon Emissions of Gold Mining
As companies progress towards net-zero goals, decarbonizing all sectors, including mining, has become a vital need.
Gold has a long history as a valuable metal due to its rarity, durability, and universal acceptance as a store of value. However, traditional gold mining is a process that is taxing on the environment and a major contributor to the increasing carbon emissions in our atmosphere.
The above infographic from our sponsor Nature’s Vault provides an overview of the global carbon footprint of gold mining.
The Price of Gold
To understand more about the carbon emissions that gold mining contributes to, we need to understand the different scopes that all emissions fall under.
In the mining industry, these are divided into three scopes.
- Scope 1: These include direct emissions from operations.
- Scope 2: These are indirect emissions from power generation.
- Scope 3: These cover all other indirect emissions.
With this in mind, let’s break down annual emissions in CO2e tonnes using data from the World Gold Council as of 2019. Note that total emissions are rounded to the nearest 1,000.
Scope | Type | CO2e tonnes |
---|---|---|
1 | Mining, milling, concentrating and smelting | 45,490,000 |
2 | Electricity | 54,914,000 |
3 | Suppliers, goods, and services | 25,118,000 |
1,2,3 | Recycled Gold | 4,200 |
3 | Jewelry | 828,000 |
3 | Investment | 4,500 |
3 | Electronics | 168 |
TOTAL | 126,359,000 |
Total annual emissions reach around 126,359,000 CO2e tonnes. To put this in perspective, that means that one year’s worth of gold mining is equivalent to burning nearly 300 million barrels of oil.
Gold in Nature’s Vault
A significant portion of gold’s downstream use is either for private investment or placed in banks. In other words, a large amount of gold is mined, milled, smelted, and transported only to be locked away again in a vault.
Nature’s Vault is decarbonizing the gold mining sector for both gold and impact investors by eliminating the most emission-intensive part of the mining process—mining itself.
By creating digital assets like the NaturesGold Token and the Pistol Lake NFT that monetize the preservation of gold in the ground, emissions and the environmental damage associated with gold mining are avoided.
How Does it Work?
Through the same forms of validation used in traditional mining by Canada’s National Instrument NI 43-101 and Australia’s Joint Ore Reserve Committee (JORC), Nature’s Vault first determines that there is gold in an ore body.
Then, using blockchain and asset fractionalization, the mineral rights and quantified in-ground gold associated with these mineral rights are tokenized.
This way, gold for investment can still be used without the emission-intensive process that goes into mining it. Therefore, these digital assets are an environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional gold investments.

Click here to learn more about gold in Nature’s Vault.

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