Written by Melanie Kozlan, Four Green Steps

Despite the negative attention Canada's oil industry has received, Corporate Knights Magazine clearly has a uniquely positive view of the industry. The Toronto-based magazine has compiled a list of the World's 100 Most Sustainable Companies- with only 6 of the companies being from Canada, all of the 6 are related to the oil industry in some way.

From the Montreal Gazette:

Asked what he thought of Canadian-energy companies' placements on this list, John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, an environmentalist group, said: "It doesn't say a great deal about Canadian companies that the best we do is around 50th, and it's an oilsands company. Mostly what it says is that most Canadian companies are not really striving for environmental sustainability."

Companies do well on these rankings if they compare favourably with others within their industry. Corporate Knights makes sure that the sector makeup of this list generally reflects the global stock market. In other words, a certain proportion of the list is inevitably going to be made up of energy and financial firms because of their prominence on world markets.

Image courtesy of Creative Commons.

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