The Top 10 Chicago Area CSR Reporters and Performers

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If I play the word association game and say the word "Chicago," I doubt many people would think of "green" these days. Nevertheless, the hometown of President Obama is one of the greenest cities in the U.S. From its 7 million square feet of green roofs to being one of America’s most bike-friendly cities, Chicago has become one of America’s greenest cities (no.  8 on Corporate Knights’ 2012 list of America’s greenest cities).

I was wondering if all of this green activity in the windy city also indicates that companies in the area are increasingly involved in CSR activity.  Or in other words – is the Chicago Metropolitan Area (aka Chicagoland) a hub of CSR leaders?

Just like we did with the Bay Area, our investigation began by identifying the Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Chicagoland. We found 29 companies from various industries, including many well-known brands such as Boeing, McDonald’s, Sears, Kraft Foods, Abbott and United Continental.

Among the 29 Fortune 500 companies in the area, 10 companies published a CSR report (34 percent), eight of them in accordance with the GRI guidelines (28 percent). This is a little below the average for S&P500 companies in terms of reporting, but better in terms of compliance with GRI guidelines (48 percent and 21 percent respectively for S&P500 companies). When compared to Bay Area companies, Chicagoland’s are lagging both in reporting and in GRI-compliance (47 percent and 43 percent respectively in the Bay Area).

The conclusion is that Chicagoland seems to be lagging in CSR reporting in general, but the Chicagoland companies who report do a better job in preparing GRI-compliant reports compared to companies in other areas.

And what about CSR performance? Four companies in Chicagoland are listed in Corporate Responsibility Magazine’s 2012 100 Best Corporate Citizens List. Since this is an election season, I decided to compare it with the portion of the electoral votes Illinois has (20 electors) in the Electoral College and found it’s very similar – 3.7 percent. So I guess you don’t have to be Nate Silver to conclude that Chicagoland gets an average grade in CSR performance.

Here are the full results of our look into CSR and CSR reporting performance of companies in the Chicago Metropolitan Area:

	company	Fortune 500 Rank	City	Revenue (in $ millions)	CSR Report	GRI Report	GRI Level	CR Magazine 2012 Top 100
1	Abbott Laboratories	71	Abbott Park, IL	38,851	yes	yes	undeclared	20
2	Allstate	93	Northbrook, IL	32,654	yes	yes	undeclared
3	Anixter	386	Glenview, IL	6,270	no
4	Aon	235	Chicago, IL	11,287	no
5	Baxter	195	Deerfield, IL	13,873	yes	yes	B	58
6	Boeing	39	Chicago, IL	68,735	yes	non-GRI		67
7	CDW	270	Vernon Hills, IL	9,602	no
8	CF Industries	402	Deerfield, IL	6,098	no
10	Corn Products International	390	Westchester, IL	6,219	no
11	Discover	300	Riverwoods, IL	8,550	yes	no
12	Dover	304	Downers Grove, IL	8,502	no
13	Exelon	145	Chicago, IL	18,924	yes	yes	A
14	Illinois Tool Works	149	Glenview, IL	18,257	no
15	Kraft Foods	50	Northfield, IL	50,365	yes	non-GRI
16	McDonald's	107	Oak Brook, IL	27,006	yes	yes	not applicable
17	Motorola Mobility	206	Libertyville, IL	13,064	yes	yes	undeclared
18	Motorola Solutions	274	Schaumburg, IL	9,549	no
19	Navistar	193	Lisle, IL	13,958	no
20	OfficeMax	354	Naperville, IL	7,121	no
21	RR Donnelley	249	Chicago, IL	10,611	no
22	Sara Lee	220	owners Grove, IL	12,103	yes	yes	B	11
23	Sears Holdings	65	Hoffman Estates, IL	41,567	no
24	Telephone & Data Systems	469	Chicago, IL	5,181	no
25	Tenneco	350	Lake Forest, IL	7,205	no
26	United Continental	76	Chicago, IL	37,110	yes	yes	C
27	United Stationers	478	Deerfield, IL	5,006		no
28	W. W. Grainger	318	Lake Forest, IL	8,078		no
29	Walgreen	32	Deerfield, IL	72,184		no

Combining the information on the companies’ CSR reporting and performance, the top 10 companies are (in an alphabetic order): Abbott, Allstate, Baxter, Boeing, Exelon, Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, Motorola Mobility, Sara Lee and United Continental.

Here are five more titles we would like to give:

The best company: Sara Lee. I thought first it would be Abbott, since I know them better, but first place goes to the company that has the highest rank on the CR Magazine Top 100 list and therefore Sara Lee is number one on ours. Although Sara Lee didn’t make too many headlines on TriplePundit recently, this food and beverage company, which split earlier this year into two companies (Hillshire Brands and D.E Master Blenders 1753) seems to take sustainability seriously and to perform above average when it comes to CSR, as we can also see from its CSRHub and Climate Counts ratings.

The company that didn’t surprise me: Kraft Foods. Kraft should be a familiar name to our readers. The company shows leadership in areas like waste reduction  and recycling and also came up couple of months ago with an impressive sustainability program that includes ambitious goals for 2015. The company still has a lot of challenges ahead, but it definitely seems like it takes CSR seriously and sees it as an integral part of its business strategy.

The company that is on the list but maybe shouldn’t be there: United Continental. United Continental opposes the EU new standard requiring all airlines flying to and from EU airports to buy carbon permits under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). I believe that a company rejecting climate change regulation is not truly responsible and hence can’t be considered a CSR leader.

The company that perhaps does not belong on such a list: McDonald’s. In fairness, McDonald’s has many CSR achievements to be proud of. Nevertheless, in some areas that are very material for the company, like sourcing beef sustainably, McDonald’s is only making its very first steps. The fact that McDonald’s is not listed on the CR Magazine top 100 companies may indicate that if it wasn’t located in Chicagoland, you wouldn’t see it on the local top 10 list, at least for now.

President Obama’s favorite company on the list: Boeing. Although I’m quite sure Obama would say all companies on the list are great American companies, I’ve got a feeling Boeing would be his favorite one. Not only because the company is a big exporter of American innovative products, but it is also on the forefront of developing fuel efficient planes and aviation biofuels. And did we mention that Air Force One was built by Boeing?

[Image credit: Frank Kehren, Flickr Creative Commons]

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris and an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Business School, CUNY SPS and the New School, teaching courses in green business, sustainable design and new product development. You can follow Raz on Twitter.