10 Top Retailers for Carbon Productivity in North America

It is an ever-growing fact that sustainability and transparent CSR business values are becoming more important to consumers and it can even be a deciding factor as to where they spend their hard earned dollars. Unfortunately, retailers aren’t traditionally known for being forthcoming with information about their sustainability practices but today I want to change that by highlighting those that are embracing it’s CSR business values. In the past, I’ve featured similar rankings of like-minded businesses in posts like the Best Corporate Citizens in Canada 2012, the Top Organizations for Employee Engagement, the Greenest Canadian Employers, the Top Diversity Employers in Canada, the Top Canadian CSR Business List, Canada’s Top Employers for 2013,  the top Canadian boards according to gender representation, the Top Canadian Boards According to Visible Minority and Aboriginal Representation, the Top Sustainable Companies, the best corporate citizens list, the  top countries for Clean Capitalism, the Green Business Leaders for 2013, the 10 Green Business Leaders, the B Corp Best for the World List, the top foreign corporate citizens in Canada, the most reputable companies and the most visible companies with the best reputation. Today I’ll be looking at the top 10 North American retailers for Carbon Productivity from the 2013 Global Retail Ranking released by Corporate Knights (CK).

CK is “a media, research and financial products company focused on quantifying and animating clean capitalism drivers for decision makers” and they released this inaugural report to highlight companies that are making sustainable choices clear for their consumers. The research model was based on 12 key performance indicators (KPIs) but companies were scored on the priority KPI for their respective sector: Energy productivity (revenue per gigajoule of energy consumption); Carbon productivity (revenue per metric tonne of direct/indirect GHG emissions); Water productivity (revenue per cubic metre of water withdrawal); Waste productivity (revenue per metric tonne of waste produced); Percentage tax paid (taxes paid in cash, as a percentage of EBITDA); Leadership diversity (percentage of women on board of directors and in executive management); Clean capitalism pay link (at least one senior executive’s compensation tied to clean capitalism-themed performance targets); CEO-to-average worker pay link (how much more CEO gets paid (expressed as a multiple) compared to average worker); Innovation capacity (R&D expenditure as a percentage of revenue); Employee turnover (company’s employee turnover rate is calculated, then percent-ranked against that of the same industry group peers); Pension fund status (for applicable companies). Unfunded liabilities at year end 2011 by market capitalization are divided by market capitalization at year end 2011. “In industry groups where all 12 KPIs are deemed to be priority KPIs, each KPI will have a weight of (100%/12) = 8.3%. This amount is then percent-ranked against that of all same-industry group peers within the CK coverage universe.”

The top 5 Canadian retailers, according to CK are:

1. Mountain Equipment Co-op
2. Canadian Tire
3. Loblaw Companies
4. Sears Canada
5. Gildan Activewear

The top American retailers, according to CK are:

1. Tiffany & Co
2. CVS Caremark
3. Staples
4. Home Depot
5. Target

As consumers continue to respond positively to sustainable CSR business practices, more and more companies will adapt with this market trend.

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Miratel Solutions is a Canadian call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.