Surprise, the most sustainable company in the world works steel
The most sustainable company in the world, according to the Global 100 ranking (used by Goldman Sachs), does not deal with renewable energies but with steel: it is Schnitzer Steel. All the details
The concept of corporate sustainability, i.e. attention to the socio-environmental impact of one's activities and the containment of waste, is one of the great topics of discussion at the Davos World Economic Forum. Furthermore, the event website states that the 2023 edition is climate-neutral , i.e. the carbon dioxide emitted will be entirely compensated through support for environmental projects in Switzerland and elsewhere, and that 80 percent of the factory used is recycled .
WHICH IS THE MOST SUSTAINABLE COMPANY IN THE WORLD
Sustainability is a concept often associated with the energy transition, which in fact is also called the "ecological transition". Yet the most sustainable company in the world is not a wind turbine manufacturer or even a developer of solar parks.
In the ranking drawn up by Corporate Knights, a research company on sustainable economy, in first place is a steel company, Schnitzer Steel Industries: it is based in Oregon, in the United States, and deals with the recycling of scrap steel.
In the previous edition, the top step on the podium of the Global 100 – the list of the hundred companies with the most positive impact on people and the environment, according to Corporate Knights – was occupied by Vestas, a Danish company that manufactures wind turbines. In that 2023 it dropped to second place.
SCHNITZER STEEL PROGRESS
According to Corporate Knights, Schnitzer Steel Industries has greatly improved its sustainability in terms of energy and water consumption, carbon emissions and scrap reuse.
Schnitzer Steel, says the managing director of Corporate Knights, Toby Heaps, "is the first steel company to reach the top of the Global 100. If one of the dirtiest sectors in the world can produce the most sustainable company in the world", he said he added, referring to the CO2 produced by the sector internationally, which alone is worth 7-9 percent of global emissions, "then there is no excuse for any company in any sector not to make progress".
In 2021, Schnitzer Steel improved energy productivity (i.e. efficiency relative to revenue: it is the metric used in the ranking) by 74 percent, water productivity by 69 percent and carbon productivity by 55 percent. In that year, the company also used the entirety of its revenues ($2.8 billion) and investments ($0.1 billion) on unspecified sustainability projects.
THE INFLUENCE OF GLOBAL 100 IN FINANCE
The Corporate Knights Global 100 ranking is very influential in the financial sector, which is paying increasing attention to the concept of sustainability: we speak in jargon of ESG factors , which measure the positive impact of an investment on the environment , on company ( social ) and general management ( governance ).
For example, the Global 100 is used by the Goldman Sachs bank to assemble asset portfolios and serves as a reference (or benchmark ) for a new index fund from the investment company Mackenzie Investments.
THE GOOD PERFORMANCE OF THE INDEX
The Global 100 doesn't factor in profitability, but it has outperformed the MSCI ACWI, a leading global index of equity funds, in seven of the last eleven. In 2022, for example, the Global 100 beat the ACWI with a 2.8 percent year-on-year return, even though both indexes saw notable declines compared to 2021, Reuters reports: -15.6 and – respectively 18.4 percent.
Between 2013 and 2022, the Global 100 returned 145.1 percent compared to 115.4 percent for the MSCI ACWI.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/schnitzer-steel-azienda-piu-sostenibile-mondo/ on Wed, 18 Jan 2023 11:05:49 +0000.