Newsweek magazine recently released their Green Rankings featuring the top American companies ranked by their impact on the environment. Trucost, an NSF Intl. partner in sustainability and global provider of environmental data and analysis, provided the magazine with the quantitative environmental performance data to develop the rankings.
Aside from the cost savings that going green offers, companies can also obtain competitive advantages by implementing sustainable business practices. McKinsey Co. projected that U.S. investments of $520 billion in building efficiency through 2020 would yield $1.2 trillion in energy savings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.1 gigatons annually—the amount emitted by the entire current fleet of U.S. vehicles.
Companies that implemented green business practices were ranked higher than their peers. Newsweek ranked the top 500 American companies based on their resource use and emissions, policies and strategies and reputation among peers. The 500 companies included in the ranking were chosen according to their revenue, market capitalization and number of employees.
Malcolm Fox, NSF Intl./Trucost Alliance director, said, “Trucost maintains the most comprehensive data on corporate environmental impacts, which is why Newsweek selected us to help them unlock the most significant issue in creating a definitive environmental scorecard: the lack of corporate reporting of even the most basic environmental data.”
Trucost's comprehensive approach allows them to evaluate the environmental impacts of a company even when the company does not report on its environmental impact. NSF Intl., a public health and safety organization, has partnered with Trucost to combine this unique methodology with NSF Intl.’s environmental certification, verification and auditing services, which provide companies not only with an affordable analysis of their current operations and exposure to carbon costs, but also help them implement sustainable business practices.
As part of the partnership, NSF Intl. and Trucost recently released a carbon emissions report examining the greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints of S 500 companies in several sectors that NSF Intl. works with: aerospace, chemicals, food and beverage, green products, healthcare, industrial goods and services, personal and household goods, automobiles and parts and retail. This is essential, as many U.S. companies will soon have to pay for greenhouse gas emissions under the planned cap-and-trade program, an approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives to companies achieving reductions in pollutant emissions and adopting energy efficient business practices.
“The report provides a comprehensive look at how these companies could be impacted by future carbon costs relative to each sector,” said Koen Bontinck, NSF Intl. vice president of sustainability services. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure, which is why we’ve partnered with Trucost. Together, we can offer U.S. corporations a cost-effective approach to measuring and managing their carbon footprints.”
NSF Intl. and Trucost are also offering a free webinar on Tuesday, Sept. 29, regarding the carbon emissions report. Topics will include understanding Trucost’s methodology, how carbon footprinting is measured and an overview of NSF Intl. and Trucost’s sustainability services. A question and answer session will complete the webinar.
Source: NSF International
