Ranking: 14
Industry: Food & Beverages
Mission: A wholesale food distribution company operating between manufacturers and retailers as a supply chain partner in the specialty, natural, organic, and fresh product marketplace. They’re spreading the word on healthy eating, sustainable living, and responsible business with integrity. Supporting a network of over 12,000 customers in more than 30,000 stores across North America.
Ranking: 21
Industry: Sustainable Investing
Mission: A renewable power and energy efficiency investor dedicated to climate change solutions. They aim to make climate-positive investments that reduce carbon emissions or increase resilience to climate change. Their investments have created over 140,000 jobs, annually avoiding 3.2 million metric tons of carbon and saving 3.4 billion gallons of water.
What 3 words best describe your company culture?
Collaborative, Service Oriented/Client Focused, Curious
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“In some respects, the parallels between the pandemic and climate change help clarify where and why we invest in climate solutions. Nature is profoundly powerful and completely indifferent to human desires. We can respect that or fight that. We choose to align our investments with nature.” — Jeff Eckel, Chairman & CEO
“In a world increasingly defined by climate change, better risk-adjusted returns will be achieved by investing on the right side of the climate change line.”— Jeff Eckel
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
Hannon Armstrong is the first U.S. public company solely dedicated to investments in climate change solutions. Through the implementation of our investment strategy and conduct of our business operations, we embody a deep commitment to a sustainable and resilient future. Everything we do at Hannon Armstrong is focused on producing a positive impact on people and the planet. That’s what it means to be 100% focused on investing in climate change solutions. And thanks to our employees, clients, investors, and partners, we’re proud to be at the forefront of the transition to a resilient and climate-positive economy.
Our vision is that every investment should improve our climate future, which is why we require that all prospective investments are neutral to negative on incremental carbon emissions or have some other tangible environmental benefit, such as reducing water consumption. Based on decades of investment experience across multiple interest rate and business cycles, intermittent governmental support for reducing carbon emissions, and several “boom and bust” cycles of business expansions in clean energy markets, we have created a climate-positive investment thesis based on the following theories:
Our impact by numbers:
What is your company’s vision for the future?
Our vision is that every investment should improve our climate future.
Ranking: 66
Industry: Food
Mission: A catering company and specialty foods retailer that seeks sustainable approaches to food service. They support local suppliers, run on 100% renewable energy, practice responsible waste management, and utilize sustainable transit solutions. Operate 8 locations in the Portland community, preventing over 1,000 pounds of food waste from entering our landfills each week.
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“The continuous-improvement philosophy of the B Corp community has always melded so well with us, because everything we do is trying to get better — from being a better employer and a better community steward to making a better-tasting sandwich.”
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
Since it was founded in 1979, Elephants Delicatessen has embraced three core values: excellence, unity, and sustainability. Our commitment to these values extends beyond our employees and customers to the larger Portland community, particularly our most vulnerable citizens. At the end of the night, each of our seven deli locations donates about 95 percent of their fresh food items to nearby non-profit partner organizations. Elephants’ catering department partners with about 30 organizations, by donating leftover food after events. Elephants has long been recognized as a champion of sustainable practices that reduce waste, and conserve energy. We invest in products that further this effort, including renewable energy sources, responsible waste management practices, and sustainable transit solutions. We also invest in the local economy: over 90 percent of our significant suppliers are located within 200 miles of Portland, keeping money and employment in the Pacific Northwest.
Ranking: 113
Industry: Food
Mission: A plant-powered cloud caterer reinventing the way people eat in the office and at home. They make and deliver bulk meals, operating with zero-waste on a mission to have everyone on the planet eat One plant-based Meal a Day (OMD). Have served 5.6 million plants and saved 200 tons of landfill waste.
Ranking: 52
Industry: Sustainable Design
Mission: Sustainably produces tiles from recycled content, hand-made and made-to-order. Tapping into California’s rich ceramic tradition, they leverage time-honored techniques with modern technology to find creative solutions for tile that lasts a lifetime. Saving 7,000 pounds of recycled materials from landfills daily, and committed to being zero waste by 2021.
What 3 words best describe your company culture?
Bright and Open
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“Our story starts with yours.”
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
Fireclay Tile is the first and only B Corp tile brand in the world. We make the world’s most beautiful tile for residential and commercial applications, with clients including Starbucks, Whole Foods, and Sweetgreens. We are Climate Neutral Certified and Employee Owned.
What is your company’s vision for the future?
We hope that all clients have an opportunity to specify and purchase materials from socially responsible brands.
Ranking: 41
Industry: Financial Services
Mission: A community development lender that finances impactful projects to benefit underserved communities in the American Southwest. They are helping to bridge the gap between conventional lending standards and the needs of low-income and distressed communities. Have financed over 1,800 community projects that retain more than 16,500 jobs and benefit over 1.9 million individuals.
What 3 words best describe your company culture?
Family-Oriented, Purpose-Driven, Innovative
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“At Clearinghouse CDFI, we believe in people. We are bound by the core value that individuals in low-income, distressed communities deserve access to affordable capital. The resulting economic opportunity provides both a greater quality of life and hope for future generations.”
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
Clearinghouse CDFI finances projects that create jobs and services to help people work, live, dream, grow, and thrive in healthy communities. We are also a Benefit Corporation (B Corp)—a company that meets rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability, and uses business as a force for good. Since inception in 1996, we have funded $1.9 billion in total loans for over 1,900 projects promoting community and economic development. These projects have created or retained 21,500 jobs and benefit over 1.9 million individuals.
What is your company’s vision for the future?
Since inception, the belief that making a difference is equally as important as making a profit has defined Clearinghouse CDFI as a company. This core value has cemented our reputation as a unique and caring financial institution and continues to help us raise equity capital from investors at a rate that is unprecedented in this industry. Today, with two decades of profitability and over $590 million in total assets, we remain one of the strongest and fasting growing CDFIs in the nation. Through all of our growth and geographic expansion, we hold strongly to the notion that the most important asset we have is our reputation.
Ranking: 33
Industry: Apparel & Fashion
Mission: A lifestyle apparel company that plants ten trees for every item purchased. They motivate and encourage environmental stewardship through earth-first apparel, allowing each and every customer to make a difference. Have restored land in 8 countries and planted over 48 million trees to date, with the goal to plant 1 billion by 2030.
What 3 words best describe your company culture?
Optimistic, Bold, Focused
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“We aren’t an apparel company that plants trees, we’re a tree planting company that sells apparel. The world won’t be changed by a million perfect environmentalists, it will be changed by billions of imperfect ones.”
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
We founded tentree with the goal of planting 1 billion trees. Our background was in tree planting and we saw the incredible impact it could have on both the environment and the people in it. Our goal was to create a brand that brought people closer to their ability to have an impact on our planet through tree planting.
In 8 years, we have planted over 50MM trees across the globe. This work has resulted in thousands of jobs being created, hundreds of individuals being lifted out of poverty, thousands of hectares of forest restored, and millions of animals impacted. We’re just getting started.
At the same time, we believe in our vehicle for planting – our product – being the most sustainable product it can possibly be. We use 100% sustainable fabrics, ethical manufacturing, have eliminated all poly-bags from our supply chain (a huge problem in apparel), and are the highest ranked b-corp in our sector behind Patagonia.
In addition to the above, we have also developed the world’s first on-the-ground verification tool for our global reforestation efforts that is currently being rolled out in Indonesia, Peru, Nepal, and Madagascar. We are working to bring more transparency and traceability to global planting projects with the hope of this platform bringing more awareness and investment into the space.
What is your company’s vision for the future?
We’re working to inspire a movement. We believe in a future where saving the planet is achievable and every single person can play a role. We believe in communicating simply and inspiring people to make change in their own life while also having an impact through sustainable, comfortable product that plants ten trees.
Ranking: 1
Industry: Automotive
Mission: An electric vehicle and clean energy company on a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. They are the world’s only vertically integrated energy company and offer increasingly affordable electric vehicles and renewable energy generation and storage. There are currently 275,000 Tesla vehicles on roads worldwide.
Ranking: 20
Industry: Flavor
Mission: A 95-year-old flavor company best known for introducing the Italian soda to America and creating the world’s first flavored latte. Each bottle promises amazing flavor and a dedication to helping all the people, partners, and communities they impact. Their flavors have strengthened community in households, cafes, and bars around the world.
What 3 words best describe your company culture?
Caring, Fun, Growthful
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“Grow Baby Grow!”
As an Opportunity Company who puts people at the center, we believe businesses can and should create more opportunity for people. We are dedicated to helping all the people, partners and communities we touch thrive. We embrace company growth and the opportunity it brings for personal growth and are passionate about shaping Torani to be a force for opportunity and development of people from all walks of life.
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
Torani has been deeply committed to our people, partners and community since 1925. For our team members, this is about creating stepping-stones of opportunity, and lifting up people from all socio-economic, educational, and cultural backgrounds. We’ve built people development practices (like Learning Journeys, Contribution Management, and Career Mixology) that enable our team members to create paths to rewarding worklives. This impacts the trajectory of families.
Externally, we have always cared deeply for our partners and communities, and most recently launched the Torani Café Opportunity Fund. As the recent pandemic and social unrest thrust us into a new normal, it became increasingly apparent that we needed to play a bigger role as part of the solution. After realizing there was no national effort to help the café communities in the US and around the world, we launched the Fund to help café operators and baristas get back on their feet. Our efforts focus on those significantly impacted by COVID-19 as well as communities who have been historically underserved. We look forward to building momentum with both our internal and external efforts and continuing our positive impact in 2021 and beyond.
What is your company’s vision for the future?
Our Torani vision is to bust out meaningful models of Opportunity for people, businesses and society. We want to bring to life our purpose — Flavor for All, Opportunity for All — internally and externally in meaningful ways. In the future, we hope to have found allies across all sectors and to be working together to solve some of the key societal issues facing us today: income inequality, racial injustice, and other factors that deny access to opportunity for all. We look forward to piloting and generating new stepping-stones of opportunity to change the trajectory for individuals and our society as a whole.
Ranking: 53
Industry: Financial Services
Mission: Creating partnerships to invest in community transformation projects. They bring high-quality grocery stores, affordable housing, schools, and health centers to areas that need better access, making health, wellbeing, and financial security accessible to families, regardless of income or zip code. Partnerships with 830 investors have positively impacted over 2 million lives.
What 3 words best describe your company culture?
Data-driven, Entrepreneurial, Collaborative
What quote best exemplifies your company?
“Great impact and meaningful social change are possible when organized data and capital is put into the hands of organized people and capacity. That belief has been fundamental to Reinvestment Fund’s work to build equitable communities.”
How is your product or service having a positive social and/or environmental impact?
Reinvestment Fund is a mission-driven financial institution committed to making communities work for all people. We are dedicated to ensuring that people in all communities have the opportunities they strive for: affordable places to live, access to nutritious food, schools where their children can succeed, and strong, local businesses that support quality jobs. Together with our partners and investors, we spark and sustain local, equitable, and green economic growth in communities across the United States.
What is your company’s vision for the future?
A nation where all people are healthy, safe, and joyful; where all neighborhoods are strong, vibrant and inclusive, with expanded opportunities for all people who live there.
