Sustainable business practices : a new model for evaluating firms within specific industries

In studying industrial sustainability programs, the authors developed a new method for evaluating sustainability practices and applied it to the examination of an array of firms in three industries: Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, and Foods using a rubric and rating scheme, reported at IBEC 2019 and at the 47th NBEA Annual Conference. The authors evaluated the firms in each industry, with the aforementioned rubric, in twenty-two sustainability categories. All of the firms studied engaged in sustainable activities, however there were clear differences among the firms within an industry and among the industries. The paper provides information useful to customers, suppliers, and investors making business decisions about dealing with the firms and industries studied in this paper.