3BL Announces 100 Best Corporate Citizens of 2024

NORTHAMPTON, Mass., October 10, 2024 /3BL/ - 3BL announced today the annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens ranking, recognizing outstanding environmental, social and governance (ESG) transparency and performance among the 1,000 largest public companies in the United States.

HP Inc. has earned the top ranking this year, with Hewlett Packard Enterprise,Johnson & Johnson, Owens Corning, and Ingersoll Rand completing the top five.

The 100 Best Corporate Citizens ranking evaluates Russell 1,000 companies based on 223 ESG factors across seven pillars including climate change, employee relations, environment, governance, human rights, and stakeholders and society. The 2024 methodology developed by 3BL and ISS ESG introduced new factors to measure progress on key issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, energy and water use, and workforce diversity to reflect modern best practices for performance and disclosure.

View the 100 Best Corporate Citizens of 2024 ranking here.

If the 2024 100 Best Corporate Citizens were a financial index, it would have beat the market average over the past two years, according to the first backtesting study of the ranking, conducted by 3BL. The companies in the top 100 had a cumulative return of 29.97% from January 2022 to September 2024, compared to 25.75% for the S&P 500.

But do corporate sustainability messages make their way from report pages, spreadsheets and board rooms to leave an impression on the public? 3BL’s latest research reveals that companies are leaving revenue on the table if they rely on reporting and disclosures alone to share information about their sustainability progress.

Download 3BL’s whitepaper for the full findings and insights now. 

Unlike other rankings, the 100 Best Corporate Citizens relies solely on publicly available data and information, eliminating the need for questionnaires or company submissions, and there is no fee for companies to be considered. To ensure accuracy, companies can verify the data collected for the ranking at no cost. The data and information used for the 2024 ranking were published between August 2023 and August 2024.

Additionally, 3BL has partnered with InfluenceMap to assess the intensity and orientation of a company's lobbying efforts and whether this lobbying is supportive or oppositional to the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. A “red flag” penalty is assessed if a company's lobbying is deemed oppositional to Paris-aligned policies, and a “green flag” bonus is awarded to recognize firms using their political influence and spending in support of the agreement. In 2024, VF Corp. is the only company to receive the “green flag” bonus.

In this year’s rankings, the competition has intensified, with the gap in overall weighted scores between No. 1 and No. 100 narrowing by nearly 4% compared to 2023. Just five companies — HP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Johnson & Johnson, Owens Corning, and PepsiCo — managed to maintain their spots in the top 10, making room for newcomers Ingersoll Rand, VF Corp., Trane Technologies, Citigroup, and Ford Motor Co. In the tech and hardware arena, HP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are leading the pack, with just three other industry peers in the top 100. Meanwhile, the Capital Goods, Food and Beverage, and Materials sectors collectively represent 30% of the top scorers.

About the 100 Best Corporate Citizens Ranking 
The 100 Best Corporate Citizens debuted in 1999 in Business Ethics Magazine and appeared annually in Corporate Responsibility Magazine for many years. 3BL has managed the ranking since 2018. To compile the ranking, each company in the Russell 1000 Index is ranked according to its transparency and performance on 184 environmental, social and governance factors.

About 3BL 
3BL is the leading sustainability and social impact communications partner, connecting organizations’ stories of purpose and progress with the audiences who matter most. We partner with over 1,500 companies — from global corporations and mid-sized enterprises to NGOs and nonprofits — to elevate their reputations as players in the world of responsible business. We do this through unrivaled news and content distribution, bespoke storytelling support, and our digital media division, TriplePundit. Learn more here.

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