But as its member states confront political headwinds at home, the EU has opted to dilute some sustainability efforts while putting others at risk. Some business leaders have supported the deregulation push and encouraged doubts over whether competitiveness and sustainability goals can co-exist. But other public companies have committed to their sustainable business efforts and found the answer: sustainability isn’t just a moral imperative, but a winning strategy.

Now in its second year, Corporate Knights’ 2026 Europe 50 list identifies the big European publicly traded companies that are thriving and setting the tone for global sustainability efforts. In 2024, these companies collectively generated US$1.2 trillion in revenues, with sustainable products and services contributing an average of 56%. Of the companies that made the cut, 33 also made Corporate Knights’ 2026 Global 100 list.

“From Danish wind turbines to Spanish renewables infrastructure and Turkish circular-economy appliances, the Europe 50 shows that sustainable business is not a niche – it’s the mainstream growth story across sectors and geographies,” Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps said in a statement. “These companies are not waiting for policy certainty. They are writing the playbook.”

The top company

When it comes to energy companies, it’s no surprise that ERG (#1) took the top spot on this year’s list – and is also number one on this year’s Global 100 list. Headquartered in Genoa, Italy, the company announced the sale of its final fossil fuel asset in 2023 and is now purely a wind and solar energy company. Between 2022 and 2024, ERG’s power generation grew by 40%, from 4,956 to 6,959 gigawatt hours, which is enough capacity to fully charge 670 million electric vehicles.

The fast track

The companies with the highest compound annual growth rate of sustainable revenue.

Industria de Diseño Textil (#16), parent company to fashion brands Zara, Massimo Dutti and several others, used a total of 73% of “lower-impact” materials (like organic cotton or certified-European linen) and recycled fibres in its products. The company, which has its headquarters in Arteixo, Spain, grew its revenue from eco-certified products, including Global Organic Textile Standard and Recycled Claim Standard. Overall, its sustainable compound annual growth revenue grew 121.5%, with sustainable revenue making up more than half of the company’s total revenue.

Home appliances company Arçelik (#23) had even higher sustainable revenue momentum, at 167.7%. The company, which is based in Istanbul, had a global turnover of €10.6 million (US$16.8 million), and Beko Europe, the European arm, is a major player in the European appliances market. While sustainable revenue makes up only 15.5% of total revenue, the company more than doubled the total number of its refurbished products between 2022 and 2024. With refurbishment centres operating in Turkey, Italy, the United Kingdom and Romania, the company has ambitions to increase the amount of reconditioned products it sells, though it hasn’t committed to a specific target.

Vonovia (#32) – Headquartered in Bochum, Germany, Vonovia owns and manages more than one million residential units across Europe. It is the continent’s largest real estate company and had one of the fastest-growing shares of sustainable revenue, at 127.8%, which came from energy-efficient homes, according to Corporate Knights’ methodology. Across Vonovia’s entire portfolio, the company decreased energy consumption from 5.5 million megawatt-hours in 2022 to 5.2 million in 2024 — the equivalent of switching off 3.4 million LED bulbs for a year. At the same time, it increased energy from renewable sources from 10% to 19% over the same period.

The breakout firm

A company with a small percentage of sustainable revenue but high sustainable compound annual growth rate.

While 3.2% of total sustainable revenue is small, BNP Paribas (#40), a multinational bank and financial holding company, has managed to grow this share by 94.7% since 2022. Based in Paris, the bank has stepped up its financing for low-carbon energy from €28.2 billion to €38.3 billion and has grown its portfolio of standardized sustainable products, such as bonds, investments and loans.

The pure-play behemoth

A large-cap pure-play company with high sustainable revenue and investment.

Novonesis (#4), based in Bagsværd, Denmark, is a biosolutions company that emerged from a 2024 merger with a total market capitalization of €25.6 billion (US$40.6 billion). By using microbes and enzymes to transform consumer products, Novonesis finds alternatives to petrochemicals or synthetic chemicals in more than 30 sectors, from baking to carbon capture to textiles. Novonesis’s revenue was €3.8 billion in 2024 and was listed as 100% sustainable, according to Corporate Knights’ methodology.

The enabler

A bank with high sustainable revenue and investment.

The Turkish bank Turkiye Sinai Kalkinma Bankasi (#21) had 4.25 times more – an absolute total of 20.4% – sustainable revenue than the other banks on the list. The Istanbul-based institution is a private development and investment bank that provides financing to projects that promote both environmental and social sustainability, such as gender equality initiatives that support women’s employment.

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The waste-to-wealth winner

A company at the forefront of the circular economy.

Séché Environnement (#17), based in Paris, is a waste management company that handles a variety of waste streams – hazardous, household, medical – and also cleans up industrial, natural and urban sites. Instead of disposing of solid non-hazardous and non-recyclable waste, the company converts it into solid recovered fuels, or SRF, which can act as a replacement to fossil fuels in furnaces or kilns for industries or urban heat networks. Nearly all of Séché Environnement’s investments were directed toward sustainability, which earned it a sustainable investment ratio of 91.5%, using Corporate Knights’ methodology.

2026 Europe 50

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A first-of-its-kind report looks at the 20 largest credit card issuers in the United States and evaluates whether they were in line with the International Energy Agency’s net-zero by 2050 pathway between 2021 and 2024. The report, titled Better Options: How Large Companies and Nonprofits Can Select Climate-Aligned Credit Card Partners, was produced by Stop the Money Pipeline, a coalition of environmental groups targeting banks and insurers, and released on February 18.

Of the 20 institutions examined, 12 finance the fossil fuel industry, including expansion projects. The report, which was developed in collaboration with groups like Rainforest Action Network, Reclaim Finance and Stand.earth, also outlined how six of these 12 institutions, such as Barclays, Capital One Financial and TD Bank, increased financing for the fossil fuel industry between 2021 and 2024. Seven of the 12 decreased financing for sustainable energy projects, such as UMB Group and Citibank. All 12 need to increase their spending on sustainable energy at least 13-fold compared to fossil fuel financing to align with net-zero by 2025 targets.

“We wanted to look at credit cards,” says Sarah Lasoff, lead author of the report and special projects manager at Stop the Money Pipeline, because there is a “viable and ambitiously climate-aligned action that companies can take.”

Changing banking institutions can be a huge undertaking for companies, non-profits or governments, Lasoff says. “Whereas a credit card partnership, you can just choose another one of these large credit card partners, because they can issue millions of credit cards, and they’re not funnelling billions into the fossil fuel industry.”

The remaining eight better-option institutions, such as American Express and Synchrony, did not finance the fossil fuel industry. Instead of commercial or investment banking, these institutions specialized in issuing credit cards, as credit unions or as smaller regional banks.

It’s really rare that we have an opportunity to potentially move so much money towards a financial institution that is doing the right thing and away from a financial institution that is doing the wrong thing.

– Sarah Lasoff, Stop the Money Pipeline

According to another report released last spring, The Carbon Bankroll 2.0 by Topo Finance, the financial institute that a company chooses to partner with may be their largest source of indirect emissions. However, tracking emissions from a company’s financial institution is not yet a standardized practice, Lasoff says. It also means that companies should look for financial institutions that align with their own sustainability goals. “If companies started choosing the better options, there would be a market incentive for financial institutions to move away from financing the fossil fuel industry,” Lasoff says. Companies that have net-zero 2050 targets might be unaware that their credit card partner is misaligned with their own corporate climate ambitions.

The Costco case

Costco, for example, is a company that Lasoff says has demonstrated that it cares about things like diversity and inclusion, its workers and the climate. But Costco’s credit card partnership with Citibank, the second-largest funder of the fossil fuel industry worldwide between 2021 and 2024, is misaligned with its climate ambitions. And Costco’s partnership is significant for Citibank: it makes up 15.8% of all its credit cards issued.

Lasoff says that this is an opportunity for Costco to do what it already does but better, and to maximize its positive climate impact. “We don’t believe that Costco wants to contribute to the pollution of communities in the Gulf South and contribute to global warming, which is creating . . . more dangerous climate disasters.”

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Costco’s co-branded credit card partnership with Citibank is set to expire in 2029, and procurement of a new partnership could start as early as 2027. Lasoff says that previously Costco had a partnership with one of the better options, American Express, and she hopes that by sharing the report with Costco, it can make choices aligned with its climate goals. Lasoff says that Costco has received a copy of the report but has not yet responded. Costco also did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

In addition to Costco, Citigroup has credit card partnerships with Best Buy, ExxonMobil, Home Depot and others. The report also mentions other partnerships with the worse fossil-fuel-funding financial institutions. For instance, JPMorgan Chase has credit cards with Air Canada, British Airways, United Airways, Hyatt Hotels, Marriott Hotels, Amazon and others.

Equipped with information about which financial institutions are the better options, companies can now decide to partner with financial institutions that are not financing climate change.
“It’s really rare that we have an opportunity to potentially move so much money towards a financial institution that is doing the right thing and away from a financial institution that is doing the wrong thing,” Lasoff says.

Ashley Perl is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Stockholm. 

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The idea occurred to Nick Paget, co-founder and chief innovation officer at Meadow, a packaging technology company headquartered in Stockholm. While he couldn’t quite imagine a consumer going for that kind of a shampoo container, he was on to something. The result is the Kapsul technology – a new but familiar user experience that turns the ubiquitous aluminum can into a vessel for household products, such as shampoo or cleaning sprays, that is used along with a dispenser. “It’s still can enough where people put it in the recycling, but it’s not can enough where people think it’s a beverage,” Paget says. 

The aluminum beverage can is one of the most recyclable packaging options available. It requires 95% less energy to produce recycled compared to new aluminum, according to European Aluminium, an industry association representing the entire aluminum value chain in Europe. Aluminum cans that are repeatedly recycled don’t suffer the same quality loss as other materials, such as plastic. On top of that, aluminum  cans take only about 60 days to recycle for reuse. 

“They’re really scalable. They’re available everywhere. People know how to recycle them. You don’t need to change human behaviour, which is always the hardest thing,” Paget says. “And the best thing is we don’t need to invent it.” 

Meadow’s timing could be exactly right. As regulations in many countries tighten and companies bear more responsibility for the waste they create, Meadow’s solution is one that’s available, scalable, familiar and could help ease the transition to more recyclable materials while cutting costs. That is, if the systems and collective will are in place. 

To reimagine the aluminum can for household products, Meadow removed the beverage can’s pull tab, and with it extra material needed for can production. The top of the can was redesigned so that the product inside wouldn’t be accidentally mistaken for a canned beverage and consumed. However, the overall can-ness still remains, Paget says, as beverage cans require such extreme precision so they don’t leak or explode, which is why aluminum manufacturing companies sometimes serve both packaging and aerospace markets. 

The can then fits into a dispenser so that someone with the grip strength of an average 80-year-old woman could use it with ease, Paget says. The top of the dispenser changes depending on the product, such as a pump or a spray nozzle, and could be designed and branded. Once the product runs out, the idea is that the can is recycled and replaced by another aluminum can. “If you could turn off the tap,” he says, “why deal with the waste?” For Paget, it’s more efficient and exciting to deal with upstream innovation and prevent more waste from entering the system. 

Circularity in motion

Europe is doubling down on its circular-economy leadership. The EU’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, which entered into force in February 2025, regulates what packaging is allowed in EU markets as well as waste-management and -prevention measures; for example, design requirements that reduce the amount of excess packaging, minimum amounts of recycled content for various types of plastic packaging and recycling targets for different materials.   

Having a circular system assumes that waste will re-enter the system. But when it comes to relying on waste, “you need to have sufficient quality in a sufficient amount,” says Stig Irving Olsen, associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, whose research focuses on environmental assessments of products and systems. Turning aluminum beverage cans back into cans, instead of using mixed aluminum scrap, reduces impacts on the climate, according to a study co-authored by Olsen. 

While there are general complexities when it comes to recycling aluminum cans, such as impurities from the decorative cover, there is no technical reason why companies using Meadow’s technology couldn’t be integrated into existing recycling systems, Paget says.  

Simplifying the infrastructure

“What’s often missed is that you need an entire collection infrastructure,” says Clarissa Morawski, CEO of Reloop, an international non-profit working on waste reduction and promoting a circular economy. Recycling infrastructure needs more than just somewhere to collect packaging. It usually requires cooperation between many different players: companies, producers of packing materials, regulatory bodies, industry associations, retailers, collection services or sites and, of course, consumers who are willing to recycle. 

“If you’re in the business of refill, and you’re putting a fleet of bottles, nice refillable containers, they are an asset,” Morawski says. “You’ve invested in them. Your business plan is based on getting it back, washing it, refilling it, getting it back out to the customer, and then scaling it up.” 

Beyond Meadow, there are many examples of refillables being tested. In the United Kingdom, supermarket chains Aldi and Ocado completed a pilot project offering basic products in refillable containers, such as pasta, rice or washing liquids, that could be returned in-store or to a driver if groceries were delivered. Some beauty brands have in-store stations where customers can refill containers after the product is finished, often offered at a discounted price. Having incentives, such as discounts, can play an important role in the overall success of return rates. 

Deposit return systems are one of the most effective ways to ensure that packaging is recycled. For example, in Sweden, consumers pay a deposit on plastic and aluminum beverage containers at checkout. When finished, shoppers can return the packaging to more than 3,100 grocery stores nationwide or at designated drop-off points for money or vouchers at the grocery store, or choose to donate the returns to charity. In 2024, Sweden had an 87.6% recycling rate for plastic and aluminum bottles, one of the highest return rates in the world. When recycling is easy for consumers, similar deposit-return systems have yielded similar results, so long as the deposit is worthwhile. In Canada, return rates jump from a median of 68% when the deposit is less than 10 cents to 92% when the deposit is 20 cents or more. 

A shift in responsibility 

Even if consumers are willing to participate, buy-in is needed from every recycling player at every step. For instance, Aldi deemed the refillables pilot an in-store success and had high return rates even without a deposit system. However, the company decided not to scale the solution, citing the inability to test it in multiple retailers. In Ontario, the Beer Store closures have meant the loss of many bottle collection sites and concerns about the future of the entire bottle deposit-return program. “All the intentions may be right, but if you don’t have the right collection system in place, you’re out of luck. You’re out of business,” Morawski says. 

Even if a good collection system exists in one place, recycling regulations vary between jurisdictions. If a bottle of beer is sold in Oregon, the bottle must be returned in state. The same applies to Canadian provinces, countries in Europe and most other places you might travel with your otherwise recyclable waste. In Europe, the new EU packaging regulation outlines that its countries should do more to make deposit systems speak to each other but stops short of specifics, Morawski says. In places where there is a lot of cross-border travel, this could help improve recycling rates and prevent unnecessary waste. 

All the intentions may be right, but if you don’t have the right collection system in place, you’re out of luck. You’re out of business.

– Clarissa Morawski, CEO, Reloop

While there are several examples of success and good intentions, new regulations could hasten the establishment of more effective systems. The EU packaging waste regulation outlines several stricter regulations, including that all member states establish deposit-return systems on plastic and metal beverage cans by 2029. The U.K. government’s extended producer responsibility for packaging will place the responsibility of paying for the collection, sorting and treatment of waste entirely on the producers. The Government of Canada has also issued a strategy on zero plastic waste. In other words, companies will soon have no choice but to deal with their waste.  

Forward thinking about waste was also something Paget noticed and helped Meadow conceptualize as it was being founded back in 2020. It wasn’t just start-ups or tier-one companies; companies of all sizes are looking for these solutions, Paget says. To ensure that its technology is readily available to companies, Meadow established partnerships along its value chain, such as with Ball Corporation, which holds more than 30% of the aluminum can market in North America, Europe and South America; Novelis, the world leader in aluminum rolling and recycling; and Fillsy, a manufacturing factory in Poland.  

When it comes to getting customers to adopt a refillable model, Paget points out that packaging fails when it tries to become the product. For example, compare the experience of using a travel coffee mug with using a paper one. “Does anyone really love the experience of drinking through a plastic lid with a tiny hole in it and your coffee tastes like paper?” Paget says. Consumers have already shown that they are willing to pay for a better design and product experience, if the recent massive annual sales of some refillable drinkware companies are any indication. 

What Meadow hopes to do is to bring that same consumer behaviour to household products while reducing waste. Use aluminum for the refillable portions so it can be repeatedly recycled. Use plastic or other strong materials for the dispenser, which should last for a long time and not break when you drop it in your shower. Paget now knows that aluminum has place in the shower — and it takes Meadow’s innovation to crack open the can. 

Ashley Perl is a Canadian freelance journalist based in Stockholm. 

The post The aluminum can books a starring role in the circular economy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But instead of using energy to cool their servers, some companies are trying to recover heat and put it to use. “What we try to do,” says Sacha van Geffen, a lead engineer at Leafcloud, “is actually see if we can place some of those compute resources that generate a lot of heat really close to a place where heat is needed.”

Leafcloud is an Amsterdam-based cloud services company that turns waste heat into warm showers through a distributed network of servers, or “leaf sites.” To do this, Leafcloud uses off-the-shelf components to build heat-waste-recovery systems inside the technical rooms of facilities like large apartment complexes, swimming pools or retirement homes, van Geffen says. The heat captured from the servers is used to produce hot water for the building.

Leafcloud isn’t the only company putting heat waste to work. U.K. company Heata offers a similar service to individual homeowners. The 2025 Paris Olympics pool was partially heated from data-centre servers run by the company Equinix. In Brooklyn, Bathhouse uses waste heat from Bitcoin mining rigs to warm its spa pools. Nexalus in Ireland harnesses heat waste to improve efficiency and lower data-centre energy consumption.

Heat waste from computing workloads is considered low-grade heat, meaning anything less than 100°C. “With low temperature grades,” says Amin Mohammadi, a PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University’s Laboratory for Alternative Energy Conversion, “converting that energy to thermal energy or cooling energy would be the best option that you have.” In other words, it’s too gentle to be converted to electricity such as with steam from a boiler, but with the help of heat pumps, it’s perfect for making a hot shower or keeping interiors toasty on a cold day. 

There are data centres and centralized district heating systems working together, too, such as Stockholm Exergi or Denmark’s Fjernvarme Fyn. This application could play an important role in heat-waste recovery from the growing demand for computing capacity. A recent Leafcloud white paper outlined that different thermal outputs could be optimized for different applications: high-performance computing for higher heat-waste temperatures, such as 60°C to 80°C, could be sent to district heating, whereas standard servers that produce temperatures in the 40°C to 60°C range could be used for building heat. 

The pieces are already in place to start making a difference. Leafcloud and other companies can capture heat waste now and without complex infrastructure that would otherwise take years to build out, such as constructing a data centre or retrofitting pipe systems for larger-scale municipal heating. By placing the heat source close to where it will be used, overall efficiency is improved, because it avoids the energy loss that occurs when heat has to move through a large system, Mohammadi says. 

In addition to heat-waste recovery, van Geffen says that Leafcloud’s distributed server system has other benefits. Using residual heat onsite not only reduces the reliance on other energy sources needed to heat water, such as natural gas; it also reduces costs. In a world where our data is so often controlled by secretive corporations, installing local servers in basements in Europe offers security and control, van Geffen says: “What we are offering is sovereign data storage, where the heat is also put to a good use.”

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