General Mills Receives High Marks Among the World’s Most Sustainable Businesses

As a global food company, we are positioned to not only create economic value in the 100+ countries in which we operate, but also to create social and environmental value.

Today, we are honored to be recognized among the world’s most sustainable companies by the 2015 Corporate Knights Global 100 Index. General Mills ranked in the top half of the global list and notably, No. 7 of the 20 U.S. companies to make the list. Just four food & beverage companies were recognized on this year’s Global 100 Index including Unilever, Coca-Cola, General Mills and Campbell’s Soup.

What do these rankings mean and why did we make the list?

With the proliferation of corporate rankings, it can be difficult to know how to interpret the results.

Since 2002, Corporate Knights, a Toronto-based media and investment advisory company, has evaluated businesses across a variety of industries to determine which are getting the most out of their capital, their employee performance, and their careful and efficient use of resources. The data-driven ranking is released annually at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and is based on publicly-disclosed information from publically traded companies with a market cap upwards of $2 billion.

Companies are first screened and stricken for the list for not keeping pace with the sustainability reporting trends in their specific industry. Companies that fail to disclose at least 75 percent of 12 key performance indicators (KPIs) for their respective GICS Industry Group are eliminated from moving forward in the indexing process. Qualifying companies are then measured against their global industry peers on the 12 KPIs including energy and water use, Greenhouse gas emissions, non-recycled and reused waste, employee compensation and more.

In our ongoing pursuit to stand among the most socially responsible food companies in the world, we are always seeking new opportunities to improve our practices, our products and our supply chains in the name of sustainability and transparency. See some highlights over the last year here.

We are proud of our progress, but we know there is still much more to be done. We’re committed to making further strides in these areas – we understand that our business requires it and future generations depend on it.

Visit www.corporateknights.com to learn more about the Corporate Knights Global 100 Index.

Learn more about General Mills’ mission of Nourishing Lives in our 2014 Global Responsibility Report or at www.blog.generalmills.com.