Hewlett Packard Enterprise tops the 100 Best Corporate Citizens of 2026, followed by Owens Corning, Trane Technologies, HP Inc. and Graphic Packaging.
The 100 Best has ranked the largest U.S. public companies in the Russell 1000 Index since 1999. This highly competitive recognition is based on a continuously evolving methodology, developed in partnership with ISS STOXX, to score companies according to their non-financial disclosures and the ways they interact with communities, workers and the environment.
As we dive deeper into the data behind the ranking, we can spot some clear patterns around sustainability performance among top U.S. companies and the leaders at the head of the pack.
Sector leadership: Tech, Materials and Consumer Staples Lead the List
All but one of the 11 sectors in the Russell 1000 Index are represented in the 100 Best ranking. Communication Services, which includes media, entertainment and telecommunications brands, is the only sector that did not place at least one company on the 100 Best.
Information Technology and Materials are the most represented sectors, with 24 and 18 companies in the top 100 respectively, but raw representation isn’t the only figure to consider when weighing sector dominance in the ranking.
The Russell 1000 reshuffles annually based on market capitalization, and the companies leading the index — and the U.S. economy — are always in flux.
As the artificial intelligence boom and the explosion of mega-cap tech stocks reshape the market, dozens of Information Technology companies were added to the Russell 1000 over the past decade as legacy sectors like Financials and Materials saw their share of the index fall flat or decline.
IT now makes up over a third of the index by market cap and is the second largest by company representation, just behind the monolith Industrials sector that includes nearly 200 manufacturing, professional services and transportation companies.
These shifts in the Index are reflected in gains on the 100 Best. Information Technology represents nearly a quarter of the 2026 ranking (24 companies), up from 20 in 2025, but the sector also added 10 companies to the Russell 1000 in the last reshuffle.
To better understand which sectors genuinely outperform and which are just larger, with more chances for companies to place, we calculated the share of Russell 1000 companies in each sector that were named to the 100 Best: a metric we’re calling the Recognition Rate.
Through this lens, the Materials sector including packaging, construction materials and chemical companies is a clear leader. Eighteen companies from the sector placed on the 100 Best, while its share of the Russell 1000 shrank year-over-year. Roughly 1 in 3 materials companies in the Russell 1000 appear on the 100 Best, for a leading Recognition Rate of nearly 35%.
Coming in at No. 2 is the Consumer Staples sector, with a nearly 18% Recognition Rate for companies in fields like food and beverage, retail, and consumer packaged goods.
While IT’s roughly 16% Recognition Rate is respectable, improvements are not equal among the more granular industry groups. Semiconductors alone makes up 10% of the 2026 ranking, compared to 7 companies in 2025. Though the group added six new companies to the Russell 1000 this year, Recognition Rate still improved from 22% to 27%, indicating genuine overperformance relative to the field.
Technology and Hardware also saw representation grow from 9 ranked companies in 2025 to 11 in 2026. But Software & Services, the largest IT industry group at 69 companies, actually declined from 4 companies to 3 — making IT growth more a hardware and chips story than a universal indicator of sustainability leadership in tech.
Other topline trends for 2026 include:
- The ranking remains highly competitive. Only 65 of this year’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens ranked in 2025, as 35 companies edged their way into top honors.
- Half the top 10 turned over. Five companies — Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Owens Corning, HP Inc., Graphic Packaging and Ingersoll Rand — held onto their spots in the top 10 compared to 2025.
- Double honors for the No. 1 spot. Hewlett Packard Enterprise took No. 1 from No. 9 and won by the widest margin we’ve observed in the ranking’s recent history. HPE scored 5.55 points over the No. 2 rank after earning the competitive “Green Flag” bonus from our partners at InfluenceMap for using their lobbying efforts in support of policies that align with the Paris Climate Agreement, compared to a 1.21-point gap in 2025.
- Big movers jump triple digits. From new disclosers to raised ambitions, the biggest movers of 2026 took triple-digit strides from the middle of the pack to appear in the top 100. Semiconductor giant KLA Corporation moved up 483 places to No. 63, global biopharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb moved up 227 places to No. 91 and packaging company Crown Holdings moved up 221 places to No. 87.
Click here to explore the full 2026 ranking.
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