15 Environmentally Friendly Companies for Gen Z on the Job Hunt was originally published on Forage.
It’s clear that Generation Z is passionate about the environment and ensuring a sustainable planet. In fact, 67% of Gen Z respondents in a Pew Research Center survey said the climate should be a top priority.
But what about in the workplace? Research shows that Gen Z wants to work for environmentally friendly companies. However, identifying truly sustainable companies as a job seeker is challenging.
In a recent survey from KPMG, one in three UK respondents between 18 and 24 years old said they rejected a job offer because of the company’s stance on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors. And 45% have researched a company’s ESG credentials when job searching.
Over half of Gen Z respondents (55%) in a survey from Deloitte said they research a brand’s environmental impact and policies before accepting a job. In addition, one in six (17%) said they’ve already changed jobs or sectors due to climate concerns — and 25% of Gen Zers plan to.
As a job seeker, how can you find genuinely sustainable companies? Below, we list some of the top environmentally friendly companies according to several criteria.
What Does It Mean to Be an ‘Environmentally Friendly Company?’
What defines “environmentally friendly” or “sustainable” companies isn’t always straightforward.
For instance, those who think “environmentally friendly” means having a net positive environmental impact may consider the description an oxymoron for companies. According to the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative, only four U.S.-based companies had positive environmental impacts in 2019. However, several other frameworks and distinctions can help you find a company that’s working toward sustainability in all the ways that matter to you.
To some extent, “environmentally friendly” in this context could mean “less environmentally unfriendly,” or companies that are taking action to minimize negative environmental impact.
ESG Frameworks
One way to quantify a company’s environmental impact is through an ESG framework. ESG frameworks take into account a variety of sustainability metrics to generate a company’s score. For example, S&P Global’s environmental score considers factors such as a company’s climate strategy, emissions, and resource efficiency.
A company can earn a favorable ESG score even if energy and sustainability aren’t its primary business focus. Overall ESG scores also include indicators outside of environmental sustainability, such as measures of DEI in a company’s workforce. Because many factors contribute to ESG scores, companies that score poorly in some areas can still have high scores overall.
Cristina Solis, sustainability consultant at Green Hive, advises that ESG ratings have limitations.
“These environmental impact assessment tools commonly face critiques, such as their dependency on potentially unreliable self-reported data, subjective evaluation processes, and the absence of standardized methodologies,” she says. “As a result, I tend to place greater trust in third-party certifications, since many of these certifications undergo audits by independent organizations, guaranteeing a higher degree of objectivity and credibility when evaluating a company’s environmental impact.”
Since ESG ratings aren’t perfect indicators of companies’ environmental impacts, you should consider them alongside other indicators.
Certifications and Business Characteristics
ESG scores can be helpful, but they’ve also been politicized, notes Luisa Chew, director of human resources at Modern Hydrogen. When evaluating a company’s environmental impact, she recommends researching beyond its ESG scores.
Chew adds that the B Corporation certification is another useful reference for job seekers looking for sustainable companies. To be certified as a B Corporation, a company must meet a set of sustainability standards.
Beyond ESG ratings and certifications, your definition of environmentally friendly companies could also consider business interests correlated with sustainable outcomes. For example, a company investing in wind power has a business incentive to further the transition to renewable energy.
When searching for sustainable companies you might want to work for, you’ll need to decide what’s most important to you. Do you want to work for a large, publicly traded corporation committed to a broadly impactful ESG framework but with top business priorities unrelated to its sustainable goals? Or do you want to work for a small start-up solely focused on sustainability initiatives but that may lack the resources necessary to make a far-reaching impact?
Top Environmentally Friendly Companies
These fifteen companies earned high environmental scores from JUST Capital. JUST Capital’s environmental score takes into account the company’s air pollution, renewable energy percentage, sustainable products and services, scope 3 emissions, scope 1 plus 2 greenhouse gas emissions, climate commitments, and resource efficiency.
We also include additional environmental scores for each company from S&P Global, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), Carbon Disclosure Project, and the Impact-Weighted Accounts Initiative at Harvard Business School.
- Workday
- Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.
- Akamai Technologies Inc.
- Microsoft Corp.
- Procter & Gamble Co.
- Bank of America
- IBM
- Johnson & Johnson
- Accenture Plc
- Ball Corp.
- Elevance Health
- VMWare Inc.
- McCormick & Company Inc.
- Williams-Sonoma Inc.
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
See original article for more information about these companies environmental impact and policies.
Environmentally Friendly Companies With the B Corp Certification
As mentioned above, another way to discover environmentally friendly companies besides ESG ratings is to look into third-party certifications like the B Corp certification.
Here are some certified B Corporations with more than 1000 employees:
- Patagonia
- Athleta
- Imperfect Foods
- Nespresso Global
- Guardian Media Group
- Cascade Engineering
- Amy’s Kitchen
- Erewhon
- Rituals Cosmetics
- Aveda
How to Research Environmentally Friendly Companies
Use LinkedIn
Chew recommends researching sustainable companies on LinkedIn, which she did as part of her job search.
“I looked at the company’s LinkedIn page, but not only theirs. I also looked at what other companies had said about that company on LinkedIn,” she says. “It can act as a reference because then you can also search that other company, see what they’re about, see who they’re affiliated with, and kind of start doing your own research there.”
She also recommends reviewing the company’s LinkedIn history to see whether its messaging around environmental sustainability has remained consistent.
Ask in Interviews
If you reach the interview stage with a company, ask your interviewers about the company’s approach. “If you’re interviewing with a company and the interviewer says things that are contrary to what’s on the website or what you know of the company — of course that’s going to be a flag,” Chew says.
Vetting Environmentally Friendly Companies as a Job Seeker
“If you get to the interview stage with a company that you’re interested in, ask a question around how the company approaches sustainability, what their environmental impacts are, and maybe ask that throughout the interview process to different interviewers and see what they say.” — Luisa Chew, director of human resources at Modern Hydrogen
Research Online
You can also read up on media coverage of sustainable companies’ environmental initiatives outside of LinkedIn. However, a company’s marketing claims are less likely to be unbiased than indicators from an external group.
Chew recommends “looking at the online research and really analyzing it to see if what you’re reading is pretty consistent across the board.”
Unfortunately, greenwashing — exaggerating or fabricating claims of positive environmental impact for marketing purposes — is common.
“Company websites and sustainability reports should be scrutinized carefully, as some companies engage in greenwashing (making their environmental efforts seem better than they are),” Solis says. “For example, a job seeker could first examine a company’s sustainability reports, then cross-reference the information with third-party certifications and rankings to get a more holistic view.”
Joseph Powell, the founding executive director of the Energy Transition Institute at the University of Houston, recommends networking with industry professionals in person at conferences as a viable method to find environmentally friendly companies.
“In my mind, that still ends up being the best way to really detect who’s sincere, who’s excited about those opportunities, versus other organizations that may be on the window dressing side,” he says.
He adds that online media coverage can fail to holistically characterize sustainable companies’ environmental contributions.
“I think the biggest dilemma is sorting through the press, which a lot of that may tend to push towards, ‘You need to be a start-up in order to be able to focus solely on net zero and sustainable new technology,’” he says. “I would say that’s not the case because those companies often don’t have the resources to be able to make an impact, and then they have to partner with those who understand the bigger market and technology chain to make a difference.”
How to Get Into Environmental Careers
If you want to take your activism and passion for the environment to the next level, you can go beyond just working for an environmentally friendly company and also choose a career that’s focused on sustainability and the environment.
If you’re in college, there are likely campus resources you can use to build qualifications to work for sustainable companies.
Check Out Environmental Programs on Campus
“If your school has a sustainability program, environmental program, even public health — there’s a lot of overlap between environmental sustainability and public health — reach out to those different programs just to understand, first, the resources that your school has,” Chew says.
There are also opportunities for students majoring in other sciences or social sciences to explore the energy industry.
“Many [universities] have these energy institutes that have cross-cutting programs across these different discipline majors, from the fundamental sciences to engineering to the social sciences and business, law,” Powell says.
Develop Your Environmental Skill Set
Powell emphasizes that certain skill sets are vital for success in the energy field.
“You can’t just say, ‘I want to do renewable energy,’” he says. “You have to know engineering. You have to know chemistry. You have to know how to build and control that. You need to know the business. You need to know all the elements that go into managing that. The renewable energy and sustainability is the target, but it’s those fundamental skills and traditional degree programs that really provide the knowledge base to do something in those fields.”
Powell also emphasizes studying data science if you get the opportunity. “Data science is just really huge because that’s transforming how we do everything,” he says.
Use Company Research to Narrow Down Your Choices
In addition to career planning, researching environmentally friendly companies can help you make decisions about your college experience and potential career goals.
Chew recalls doing this sort of research to help her choose her college major.
“I was like, ‘Okay, here’s my short list of places that I would be interested in working.’ After that I then looked at the careers page on those companies’ websites to see — okay, who are the people that they’re recruiting for, you know, who’s on the website that maybe they’re showcasing, and what’s their job title? What department are they in? What type of work are they doing? That would help me formulate, okay, maybe this is the sort of major that I’d be interested in,” she says.
When it comes to choosing classes and internships during college, you can use company research to help plan your environmental career path after you graduate.
