The 2008 SB20: World's Top Sustainable Stocks

SustainableBusiness.com announced its 2008 Sustainable Business 20 (SB20) List: The World’s Top Sustainable Stocks.

The purpose of the SB20, now in its seventh year, is to showcase innovative, model companies that are leading us toward our ultimate goal of reaching a sustainable society. The list is presented in the Progressive Investor newsletter, published by SustainableBusiness.com, which tracks and analyzes sustainable stocks.

To choose the 20 companies, SustainableBusiness.com works with a group of judges, who are among the most respected social/green stock analysts in the world. Read about the judges and the selection process.

"Our goal is to create a list that showcases public companies that, over the past year, have made substantial progress in either greening their internal operations or growing a business based on an important green technology," says Rona Fried, Ph.D., SustainableBusiness.com CEO and Editor of Progressive Investor.

What differentiates the SB20 List from the many others? You’ll find small companies as well as the usual large ones – and from most regions of the world, not just the USA. The selections are made from the deep knowledge and experience of our judges, not numerical formulas.

SB20 Criteria

Sustainability Criteria: The most exciting companies in terms of how they are conducting their business, or in the disruptive green technologies they are advancing that solve our environmental problems and lead us to a sustainable society. In particular, they have a very strong GREEN story, with the ability to have widespread influence. Companies must have made major announcements and/or significant progress in meeting targets over the past year.

Financial Criteria: Companies are preferably profitable with strong management and balance sheets. Development stage companies must have revenue and be on track to profitablity. Each company would enhance an investment portfolio although it may not be in buying position today.

The SB20 is not a "buy" list, since purchasing stocks has much to do with market conditions, but all the companies are strong financially and would be an asset to a portfolio. We strive to choose companies of various sizes, industries and parts of the world, but the list doesn’t constitute a diversified portfolio.

If it’s not a "Buy" List, why do we do it?

Although there’s no shortage of information on the environmental performance of companies, it remains scattered and difficult to find. Few people have the time or interest to plow through sustainability reports of thousands of companies, yet we receive requests from the media, financial advisors and individual investors, NGOs, research firms and others asking us which are the top companies and how to differentiate among them.

It’s hugely important that companies that are sticking their necks out feel appreciated for their work. While it’s easy to make small improvements and send out press releases, it’s exceedingly difficult to literally transform the way businesses operate – the products they make, how they distribute them and how they dispose of them – which is what we’re asking them to do.

The most important distinction is between Green Pioneers (companies that produce green products/ services) and Corporate Pioneers (companies with conventional products/ services that are greening their operations and product lines).

It’s always tempting to focus on Green Pioneers that make natural foods, green building products or renewable energy. They’re the companies people get most excited about, but it’s equally important that conventional companies green their internal operations and products. This year, our list is equally divided between the two categories.

Core SB20 Companies

We consider every company that’s been on the list throughout the years to be a model of excellence and well worth evaluating as as an investment. It is only our desire to present as fresh a list as possible each year that takes some of them off the list. That’s why we look for companies that have either made significant announcements or have made strong progress toward their sustainability goals over the past year.

Every year we produce the SB20 List, a core group of companies are nominated over and over again. This year, we decided to create a "Core List" of companies that remain SB20 Members "for life." When a company is on the SB20 List for four or more years, they are considered for Core status. The following group of companies are sterling examples of excellence in their fields.

Core SB20 Companies	Ticker	Sector	Country
Canon	NYSE: CAJ	Electronics	Japan
Electrolux	ELUXA.ST	Appliances	Sweden
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters	Nasdaq: GMCR	Food/Agriculture	USA
Herman Miller	Nasdaq: MLHR	Green Building	USA
Novozymes	NZYM.CO	Industrial Processes	Denmark
Precious Woods	PRWN.SWX	Forestry	Switzerland
STMicroelectronics NV	NYSE: STM	Semiconductors	Switzerland
Vestas Wind Systems	VWS.CO	Wind Energy	Denmark
Whole Foods Market	Nasdaq: WFMI	Food/Agriculture	USA

SB20 Company Highlights:

The following are some highlights from this year’s group of 20 companies. You can read short snapshots of all the companies here. Just click into the company name you’re interested in learning about.

Green Building

Even in the toughest construction market we’ve seen in a long time, green building companies are holding their own. Apogee (APOG) is a leading manufacturer of efficient glass, which coats some of the highest profile green buildings, such as the Bank of America tower currently under construction in New York City.

Accsys Technology is a small company based in England that’s developed a unique technology – it gives softwood trees the durability and quality of hardwoods. If we could use softwoods to make windows, doors and furniture it would greatly relieve the stress on the world’s primary forests.

Interface is finally benefiting from its steep climb up "Mount Sustainability" – its innovations in carpet tiles are bearing fruit. The first quarter of 2008 was its best ever.

Renewable Energy

Over a third of the companies on this year’s list produce clean energy: in solar, wind and geothermal.

First Solar continues to dominate in thin film solar, producing the highest efficiency, lowest cost modules in the industry by far – no small feat.

Solar Millennium, based in Germany, is building the world’s largest solar thermal plants – the first solar utility.

India-based Suzlon graces our list because of its rapid ascent in the wind industry – it rose to a 10.5% market share in 2007.

England-based Climate Exchange Plc is our first company from a brand new industry – Carbon Markets.

Corporate Pioneers

About half the SB20 List are "Corporate Pioneers" – companies with conventional products and services that are greening their product lines.

Over the past year, Google has become as admired in sustainability circles as for its endless innovation in the Search Engine business. Google’s extensive server farms operate at an unheard of 90% efficiency, which they’re working to extend throughout the industry; they’re also investing hundreds of millions of dollars in clean energy technologies.

IBM is greening its own and customers’ data centers, which can be 100 times as energy intensive as the average office building. They’re designing technologies to cut energy use by half by 2010, while increasing computer capacity by a factor of 10.

Meanwhile, TNT is setting the trend for its industry – the postal and express mail company, which is based in the Netherlands and competes with FedEx and UPS, has committed to becoming the first zero emissions transportation company.

Natura Cosmeticos is doing the same in the personal care industry – it completely banned animal testing in products or suppliers’ ingredients.

And Chipotle Mexican Grill is proving that fast food can be healthy and come completely from humane, organic farms. Its 730 restaurants now serve 100% free range pork and chicken.

**Learn more by reading Snapshots of all the SB20 Companies.

The 2008 SB20 List

Company Name	Ticker	Sector	Country
Accsys Technologies Plc	AXS.L; ACSYF.PK	Green Building	England
Apogee Enterprises, Inc.	Nasdaq: APOG	Green Building	USA
Asahi Pretec	5855.T; AHPKF.PK	Recycling	Japan
Canadian Hydro Developers, Inc.	KHD.TO	Wind/Small Hydro	Canada
Chipotle Mexican Grill	NYSE: CMG	Corporate Pioneer	USA
Climate Exchange plc	CLE.L; CXCHF.PK	Emissions Reduction	England
First Solar	Nasdaq: FSLR	Thin-Film Solar	USA
Google, Inc.	Nasdaq: GOOG	Corporate Pioneer	USA
Hewlett-Packard Co	NYSE:HPQ	Corporate Pioneer	USA
IBM	NYSE:IBM	Corporate Pioneer	USA
Interface	Nasdaq: IFSIA	Corporate Pioneer	USA
Lindsay Corporation	NYSE: LNN	Water	USA
Natura Cosmeticos SA	NATU3.SA	Corporate Pioneer	Brazil
Ormat Technologies	NYSE: ORA	Geothermal Energy	USA
Philips Electronics	NYSE: PHG	Corporate Pioneer	Netherlands
Solar Millennium AG	S2M.DE	Solar Thermal	Germany
Staples, Inc.	Nasdaq:SPLS	Corporate Pioneer	USA
Suzlon Energy Ltd.	SUZL.BO	Wind Energy	India
TNT N.V.	TNT.AS; TNTTY.OB	Corporate Pioneer	Netherlands
WaterFurnace	Renewable Energy	WFI.TO Geothermal Heat Pumps	USA

**Learn more by reading Snapshots of all the SB20 Companies.

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Progressive Investor is a monthly online newsletter that guides investors and analysts toward green investments. It covers all green business sectors including renewable energy, green building and healthy lifestyle.

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