Novo Nodisk A/S, a Danish health-care company that sells discounted insulin to developing countries, has topped this year's list of the 100 most sustainable companies, prepared by Corporate Knights magazine.
The Global 100 list, released each year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, ranks major corporations on a wide variety of factors including their relative energy and water consumption, carbon emissions, board diversity, the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay, and the amount of waste they generate.
The top 100 companies come from 22 countries.
Canada has six firms on this year's list, mainly financial services and energy firms. Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps said Canadian energy firms made the list, despite their role in extracting carbon-based fuels, because they have improved relative to their peers. They also do well when it comes to R&D spending, tax and governance factors.
The Canadian firms in the top 100 were Suncor Energy Inc. (48), Enbridge Inc. (71), Encana Corp. (76), Nexen Inc. (89), Sun Life Financial Inc. (91) and Royal Bank of Canada (95).
The full list is available at Corporate Knights.