Australia has come in equal third with Canada in this year’s list of the 100 global most sustainable firms. Both had nine firms in the top 100. General Electric, the PG&E Corporation and Tnt Nv were the top three, according to the list scored by Corporate Knights and released at the World Economic Forum's conference in Davos.

Analysis for the Global 100 was based on the work of a group of sustainability research providers used to isolate a short list of the top 10% of sustainability and financial performers from a universe of 3,000 developed and emerging market stocks. These were then ranked by a set of 11 key performance indicators calculated using environmental, social, governance (ESG) and financial data.

The main indicators were energy, carbon, water and waste productivity. Rather than just gross figures, these are ratios of sales to total direct and indirect energy consumption, total CO2 and CO2 equivalent emissions, total water use and total waste produced.

Other factors taken into account were leadership diversity, which was gauged by the percentage of women on a company's board of directors; a comparison of the highest paid executive's compensation to average employee compensation and the percentage of total reported tax obligation that was paid in cash.

Once again the UK is home to the greatest number of companies with 21 this year compared to 20 on the list in 2009. In second place was the US with 12 firms, down markedly from 20 last year. Overall, 50% of the firms that made the cut in 2009 are on the list for 2010.

Australian firms that made the cut where: Westpac (ranked 15), IAG (22), Stockland (24), GPT Group (47), Bluescope (53), Origin Energy (56), Boral (61), Sims Metal Management (73) and Dexus Property Group (97).

Meanwhile, corporate giants that rank among the leading 20 companies include Nokia (5), Procter & Gamble (13), Toyota (14), Philips Electronics (17) and Shell (20).

On the other hand, the UN’s Global Compact Office has just announced that 859 companies were delisted from the initiative’s database of participants for failure to meet mandatory annual reporting requirements. More than 5,300 active business participants from over 135 countries remain.

“More and more companies are beginning to understand the importance of environmental and social reporting for the continuous improvement of their own performance,” said Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact.

Under the Global Compact’s policies, participating businesses must issue an annual progress report (also known as Communication on Progress) on initiatives covering human rights, workplace standards, the environment and anti-corruption.

While delisted companies are removed entirely from the Global Compact’s database, the initiative does keep the door open for those companies willing to return.

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