Earth Day 50th Anniversary: Green 50 Top Business Moves for the Planet

In the 50 years since Earth Day was launched, which companies stepped up to deliver green solutions?

TORONTO, MONTREAL and NEW YORK, April 20, 2020 /CNW/ - In honor of the 50^th anniversary of Earth Day, Corporate Knights - in partnership with Earth Day Canada and Earth Day Initiative - will release a list of the Green 50 Top Business Moves for the Planet over the Past 50 years.

The list will be launched via Zoom on April 20^th at 11am EDT: https://zoom.us/j/273414943?pwd=RnhjOFpDaGFodHl3UU5oalVHL1ZXZz09

"Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, it's worth remembering we have a pretty good track record of fixing planetary-scale problems when we set our minds to it", said Toby Heaps, editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights.

The Green 50 are examples of moments that reveal the profound impact corporations can have on the planet when they lead change rather than follow it," said Pierre Lussier, Executive Director of Earth Day Canada. "The Top 50 isn't an endorsement of a company's entire corporate legacy. It's a recognition that one act – one sustainability chief's initiative, one big-tent collaboration with non-profits, regulators and like-minded companies, one sustainably minded CEO – can shift the tides," said Mr. Lussier.

"While the pandemic is the most urgent threat facing us this year, the climate crisis represents the greatest challenge to the future of humanity – and also vast opportunities for those disruptors and scalers that deliver closed loop, clean economy solutions," said John Oppermann, Executive Director of the Earth Day Initiative.

"We hope this Top 50 list will inspire more leadership at a time when the planet and every living entity on it needs it most," Mr. Opperman said.

Open nominations for the Top 50 were held in February. In addition, Corporate Knights contacted close to 100 thought leaders in various sectors and industries to get their input. A team of expert advisors* helped reduce the shortlist to 150, then a panel of judges voted on their top 50 picks.

The full Green 50 can be viewed on April 20 from 7am EDT at: https://www.corporateknights.com/channels/leadership/green-50-15873660

Green 50 Judges:

Pierre Lussier, director of Earth Day Canada

John Oppermann, executive director of Earth Day Initiative

Toby Heaps, CEO and co-founder of Corporate Knights

Adria Vasil, managing editor, Corporate Knights

About Corporate Knights: Corporate Knights Inc. includes the sustainable business magazine Corporate Knights and a research division that produces rankings and financial product ratings based on corporate sustainability performance.

About Earth Day Canada: Earth Day Canada is a charity that helps people and organizations reduce their impact on the environment through concrete action on Earth Day and every day.

About Earth Day Initiative: Since 1970, Earth Day has been a catalyst for ongoing education, action, and change.  Earth Day Initiative is a 501(c)(3) organization that promotes environmental awareness and solutions through partnerships with schools, community organizations, businesses, and governments.

* Adèle Hurley, Andrew Craig, Andy Behar, Beatrice Olivastri, Blair Feltmate, Bruce Lourie, Céline Bak, Charmaine Love, David Love, David Runnalls, David Wheeler, Frances Edmonds, Frank Frantisak, Geoff Love, Greg Payne, Hazel Henderson, Hunter Lovins, Ivo Mulder, Jane Ambachtsheer, John Cook, John Elkington, Julia Christensen-Hughes, Mark Rudolph, Mark Tercek, Michael de Pencier, Monte Hummel, Nick Parker, Peter Love, Ralph Torrie, Shanta Chatterji Simon Zadek, Tyler Hamilton, Valerie Chort, Vicky Sharpe.

Green 50 Top Business Moves for the Planet over the past 50 years

Company	Act	Year	Country
Patagonia	First major clothing company to put protecting the planet at core of its brand	1973	USA
SC Johnson	First to ban ozone-destroying CFCs from aerosol products	1975	USA
The Body Shop	Jump-started wave of conscious consumerism and cruelty-free cosmetics	1976	United Kingdom
Cascades Tissue Group	Pioneered idea of turning household and industrial waste into toilet paper, saving 46 million trees every year	1977	Canada
Ballard Power Systems	Trailblazing developer of hydrogen fuel-cell technology	1983	Canada
HP	Early leader in e-waste recycling and take-back programs	1987	USA
IKEA	Early adopter of Natural Step Framework to help IKEA purge formaldehyde from its wood and secure a sustainable lumber supply	1990	Sweden
Herman Miller and MBDC	Creation of system for designing cradle-to-cradle-certified products (today there are more than  600 C2C certifications in 30 countries)	1990s	USA
Sony	Release of the world's first commercial rechargeable lithium-ion battery, crucial to the mobile technology and electric vehicle revolution	1991	Japan
Nichia Corporation	Started production of the first high-brightness blue LED light, enabling the invention of the groundbreaking white LED; the invention effectively made Edison's energy-hogging incandescent light bulb obsolete	1993	Japan
BYD	Founded its first rechargeable -battery factory, setting it on the path to becoming world's largest electric carmaker	1995	China
ABB	Started production of direct torque variable-speed drives; sparked dramatic reductions in power use across a wide array of industries	1995	Switzerland, Sweden
Interface	Launch of the Mission Zero program, challenging the company to eliminate any negative impact it had on the environment by 2020. It was a radical path for a carpet business in the mid-1990s and inspired countless companies to invest in sustainability.	1994	USA
Toyota	Debuted the world's first mass-produced hybrid electric vehicle. It's since sold 14 million units.	1997	Japan
Unilever	Launch of the Marine Stewardship Council– certified seafood program with WWF, catalyzed by collapse of Grand Banks cod fishery in Canada in the 1990s	1997	United Kingdom, Netherlands
Impax	Pioneered investing in environmental solutions and today has £15.1 billion in assets. Its work blazed the trail for today's explosion in responsible investing.	1998	United Kingdom
LONGi Solar	Driver of the solar industry shift to efficient mono wafers, which has been critical to reducing the cost of solar panels around the globe	2000	China
Umicore	Transformation from destructive miner to world's largest recycler of precious metals. Today, Umicore largely mines metals from e-waste, spent batteries and smelter residues.	2000s	Belgium
Tembec	After facing years of protest, Tembec became the first and largest Canadian forest-products company to go all in on Forest Stewardship Council certification.	2001	Canada
Legal & General	The multinational financial-services company was the first investor to back CDP's push to get companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. More than 525 investors globally, with assets of US$96 trillion, have now signed CDP's disclosure request.	2002	United Kingdom
Bioregional	Developed One Planet Living framework for global eco-communities, providing tools and training to create sustainable homes and communities around the globe.	2002	United Kingdom
Tesla	Founded with goal of bringing high- performance, zero-emission EVs to the masses. Tesla showed it was possible to make an EV that accelerates as fast as a Ferrari, which influenced legacy and luxury automakers to embrace the commercialization of electric cars.	2003	USA
Walmart	Consumer backlash against its business practices prompted the world's largest company to announce it was going green, launching zero-waste, 100%-renewable-energy and sustainable-product targets and triggering a wave of improvements among suppliers.	2005	USA
BlaBlaCar	This French company established the world's leading long-distance ridesharing start-up and now has 87 million members in 22 countries.	2006	France
Seventh Generation	This maker of green cleaning products became a founding member of B Corp, which holds purpose-driven companies to account.	2007	USA
Intel	One of the first companies to link employee bonuses to sustainability performance – effectively making its sustainability goals everyone's job.	2008	USA
Ørsted	Formerly Danish Oil and Natural Gas; undertook a massive transformation, shifting its energy generation from 85% fossil fuels to 75% renewables in a decade.	2009–2019	Denmark
Kimberly-Clark	After years of Greenpeace campaigning, the world's largest manufacturer of tissue-paper products set a goal of getting  100% of its wood pulp from environmentally responsible sources.	2009	USA
IBM	First electronic maker to phase the "forever chemicals" PFOS and PFOA out of its chip manufacturing business – making IBM's e-waste less toxic.	2010	USA
Sainsbury	Becomes world's largest retailer of Fairtrade products	2010	United Kingdom
Kering	The luxury clothing giant publishes the first Environmental Profit & Loss Account of its Puma division, assigning a monetary value to nature's "services" used by the business – fresh water, clean air, healthy biodiversity – as well as to the company's negative impacts.	2011	France
Plastic Bank	Turns plastic waste into currency	2013	Canada
Rockefeller Brothers Fund	Announces that it's divesting from fossil fuel investments, kicking off the divestment movement; now been embraced by major financial players representing assets in excess of US$11 trillion at the end of 2019.	2014	USA
Philips	Pioneered circularity as a service. Philips didn't invent the light bulb, but it reinvented how we buy them, by turning lighting into a rentable service that makes it easier for Philips to reuse and recycle materials at their end of life.	2014	Netherlands
Ontario Power Generation (OPG)	Closure of Ontario's last coal-fired power plants and launch of solar plant with First Nations partners	2014	Canada
Norges Bank Investment Management	World's second-largest asset owner exits coal investments	2015	Norway
Adidas	First major shoe company to scale use of ocean plastic	2015	Germany
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development	Launched the Green Economy Transition strategy and has now financed 1,900 green projects and signed US$34 billion in green investments	2015	European Union
Axa	First major insurance company to begin withdrawing from coal. More than  35 insurers with combined assets of US$8.9 trillion have now adopted some form of coal divestment policies.	2015	France
Beyond Meat	Launches plant-based burger that "bleeds," fuelling a rise in "flexitarians" – and a stampede of restaurant partnerships racing to put plant protein on the menu	2016	USA
Alipay	Launched the Alipay Ant Forest app, which has planted 122 million trees and counting and inspired similar models in other countries.	2016	China
SSAB, LKAB & Vattenfall	Created HYBRIT initiative for fossil-free steelmaking technology. With steel accounting for 8.3% of all global CO2 emissions, the emerging technology holds a lot of promise.	2016	Sweden
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China	The largest bank in the world became the first bank in China to evaluate the impact of environmental policies on credit risks.	2016	China
Google	Google has become the  world's largest corporate buyer of renewable power.	2017	USA
Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec	First major institutional investor in North America to set targets for carbon reduction and climate solutions	2017	Canada
TerraCycle	Creation of LOOP, the closed-loop refillable packaging service for large packaged-good brands	2019	USA
Maple Leaf Foods	First major meat company to bet big on plant protein	2019	Canada
KLM	First major airline to invest in sustainable aviation fuel at scale. SkyNRG's biofuels are notably palm-oil free and sourced mostly from used cooking oil.	2019	Netherlands
Mahindra Group	One of India's largest businesses, Mahindra joined the Science Based Targets initiative and got 450 other companies to follow suit.	2019	India
Microsoft	The largest company in the world by market cap, Microsoft's groundbreaking pledge commits to removing all the carbon it has emitted through electricity production since the founding of the company in 1975.	2020	USA

SOURCE Corporate Knights Inc.

Toby Heaps, CEO, Corporate Knights Phone: ++(1) 416.274.1432, Email: [email protected]; Earth Day Initiative Contact Information: Alexander Bryden, Senior Account Executive, Fenton Communications, Phone: [phone], Email: [email protected]

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