He points to the tragic collapse in April 2013 of Rana Plaza in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, in which more than 1,100 garment factory workers were killed. In the months that followed there was a consumer outcry, as westerners came to terms with the working conditions in the places where much of our clothing is made. But Bangladesh did not export less clothing during the remainder of that year.

“The Rana Plaza issue did not impact their exports – in fact, they went up,” Labistour says. “I think there’s a huge disconnect between what consumers say and how they react on social media versus how they actually act in their daily lives… I never operate from the point of view that the consumer is going to buy stuff from you because of sustainability attributes.”

And yet MEC places such an emphasis on sustainability that it received the top spot on this year’s Corporate Knights ranking of the Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada, its second 1st place ranking since first appearing on the Best 50 in 2007. MEC outshines its retailing peers when it comes to areas such as carbon productivity, the percentage of women in senior management, and the ratio of the CEO’s pay compared to that of the company’s average worker.

So why does it embrace sustainability, if not to appeal to consumers?

“It’s just smart business,” Labistour says. “Resources are becoming more expensive, local communities are railing against toxicity from the factories in their neighbourhoods, water is becoming a real commodity that we have to watch.”

Staying ahead of the curve on these issues not only bolsters efficiency but helps minimize a company’s future risks, he suggests. For example, “governments are now bringing in packaging taxation, and people that are ahead of that game and legislation are going to be more efficient businesses in the long term,” he says. “So for me, this is not the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do.”

In an era of extreme business complexity, Labistour is a fan of breaking down barriers so that the company can run as an organic whole. “You can no longer run your business in silos,” he says.

That means, for instance, that information technology, financing and marketing should be working symbiotically. And it means that sustainability should be integrated, not separate.

“We don’t have a ‘sustainability person’ who is responsible for waste diversion in stores. It’s part of the standard operations of the organization,” Labistour says. “It’s the integration of these deliverables within everyone’s job descriptions – whether you’re getting better at waste diversion, or getting better at meeting the customer’s expectations, or becoming more efficient in your supply chain, it’s all part and parcel of trying to be a better business.”

By embedding sustainability in everyone’s jobs, it becomes “operational dial tone,” he adds. “You always hit problems on the way, whether it be legislative changes or process changes that you bump up against. But if it is part of someone’s job description and it is something that is part of general performance delivery, you work your way around it.”

Labistour credits the diversity within the organization’s ranks for making meetings more fruitful than they might otherwise be. Forty-four per cent of MEC’s executives and directors were women in 2012. “It’s not just physical diversity, it’s diversity of thought,” he says. “You have a much stronger discussion, and you come to much richer results.”

The outdoor goods retailer, which has more than 3.5 million members, updated its five-year business sustainability strategy in 2012, focusing on four pillars: product integrity, retail operations, member service, and community.

Labistour believes one of the company’s biggest sustainability achievements is also one of its least recognized, and that’s the fact that more than half of its MEC-brand apparel materials are bluesign approved. The bluesign system looks at the use of sustainable ingredients and the production process in the textile industry and is based on five principles: resource productivity, consumer safety, water emission, air emission, and occupational health and safety.

The accomplishment, however, that brings the biggest smile to Labistour’s face is the way MEC now reports its sustainability achievements and goals. “For me, the thing I’m most proud of is the fact that our year-end report this year will be an integrated business and sustainability report,” he says.

That’s in keeping with his philosophy about breaking down silos and ensuring that sustainability permeates the organization. “We’ve still got a way to go, it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s the first one.”

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Westpac Group is Australia’s oldest bank – in fact, one of the country’s oldest companies with roots tracing back to 1817. Its latest annual report boasts that between 2012 and 2013 its customer base rose from 11.8 million people to 12.2 million, its profits climbed from $5.97 billion Australian to $6.82 billion, and its return on equity increased from 14 per cent to 15.4 per cent.

But it also notes that the bank’s emissions from in-house activities and energy purchases in Australia and New Zealand fell from 183,937 tonnes CO2-equivalent to 180,862 tonnes, while its total indirect emissions (excluding energy purchases) were reduced from 91,855 tonnes to 85,013 tonnes. At the same time, the use of office paper fell from 1,579 tonnes to 1,523 tonnes.

Westpac is not perfect – the percentage of its pre-tax profits going to community investment dropped from 1.5 in 2012 to 1.33 in 2013 – but it has demonstrated its ability to challenge itself, measure its progress and provide transparency in terms of both its successes and shortcomings.

In 1992, Westpac became the first of Australia’s four major banks to publish an environmental policy. In 1997, it was the first to create a formal community-volunteering program, and in 2001 it established a board committee dedicated to sustainability. A year later, the bank became the first of its peers to publish a sustainability report and to establish a sustainable supply chain policy. It endorsed the UN principles for responsible investment in 2007, and in 2008 launched a five-year climate change strategy.

These actions have produced results. Between 1996 and 2008 the bank reduced its emissions by more than 40 per cent. It recently became a carbon-neutral operation.

Last February, after much thought, Westpac took its sustainability ambitions a step further and launched a new strategy for 2013 through 2017 that includes 10 measurable goals in what it deemed to be three areas of priority: improving the way people work and live, finding solutions to environmental challenges, and helping customers to have a better relationship with money.

The resulting “sustainability scorecard” for the coming years was the outcome of much brainstorming and work by both the bank’s sustainability people and its senior leaders.

“It was time to really take it up to the next level and look at the future and understand what are the emerging issues,” says Siobhan Toohill, Westpac’s head of sustainability.

The work involved a thorough assessment of what Westpac sees as the key issues that will emerge over the next 30 years. The 10 objectives it set include extending the length and quality of working lives, anticipating the future needs of aging and culturally diverse customers, providing products and services to help customers adapt to environmental challenges, and increasing lending and investment in clean technology and environmental services.

Westpac is already making progress toward its new goals. The proportion of women in its leadership ranks has risen to 42 per cent, up from 40 per cent in 2012 and 35 per cent in 2010. It has earmarked $6 billion for lending and investment by 2017 in clean technology and environmental services (including renewable energy, water efficiency and waste management activities), which amounts to a doubling of its current investment in the sector. And it has recently introduced new technology to further reduce wasted printed paper.

The bank is now trying to lower its electricity consumption at both its retail and commercial sites by 10 per cent per square metre, make its data centres more efficient and increase the recycling rate at its head office in Sydney to 75 per cent. It is also at the forefront of the burgeoning social investment sector, and has begun spending much time on social impact evaluation.

Westpac recently led a consortium with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Benevolent Society (Australia’s first charity) that won a tender from the New South Wales government to issue a $10-million five-year social benefit bond.

Funds from the bond, issued in early October, have been used to create a service called Resilient Families, which will seek to reduce the number of children who wind up in foster care. The senior tranche of the bond will return anywhere from zero to 10 per cent per year, depending on how successful the program is at preserving families, with the returns being paid from the funds the government will save on foster care.

“We see this broader area around impact investing growing, and we’re excited to be at the front end of helping to design initiatives,” Toohill says.

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But those annual emissions savings weren’t enough for Desjardins. In the last couple of years, it has been putting a big push on alternative transportation in an effort to further cut its environmental footprint. Some of the emphasis has shifted from buses to bikes.

The financial institution, which has 42,500 employees in Canada, has offered staff 50 per cent off the registration fee for the BIXI bike-sharing program along with workshops on tuning up a bike for people who use their own. It has also given out free three-month passes to try public transit, held regular draws for free bus and metro passes, and created a company carpooling program. Along the way the cooperative behemoth has notched a 30 per cent improvement in its energy productivity ramping revenue per gigajoule of energy consumption from $5,144 (U.S.) in the 2011 survey to $7,187 for 2012.

But if this was all that Desjardins was doing, it wouldn’t matter that much, as a financial institution makes its central impact on society via its financial operations. And it is on this score that Desjardins rose above the pack to claim top spot among Canada’s 2012 Best 50 Corporate Citizens in Canada. For example, to assist customers who have run into severe financial difficulty and are often excluded from conventional credit networks, it offers free budget advisory services and “tide-over” loans of up to $500 that can be paid back without interest over 24 months.

Small businesses can tap into microcredit. Homeowners can take out green mortgage loans to pay for energy-efficiency retrofits. For customers who purchase fuel-efficient vehicles, such as hybrid-electrics, Desjardins offers discounts of between 10 and 15 per cent on auto insurance premiums. It also offers low-cost home insurance to low-income earners. Its socially responsible mutual funds, meanwhile, have seen a doubling of assets under management to $506 million in 2010, up from $259 million a year prior.

Progressive actions are also visible at the board and management levels. Desjardins now boasts one of the lowest differentials between CEO compensation and average employee pay. It has also bolstered its standing in the rankings by linking executive compensation to the achievement of sustainability-related performance targets and growing the proportion of women on its board.

Chief executive Monique Leroux suspects that Desjardins has a bit of an advantage over some corporate contenders because of its status as a cooperative; it works for its members, rather than investors. “If you read our mission, it’s a very special mission,” says Leroux. “It’s really to contribute to improve the economic and social well-being of people and communities. It’s not just a question of making money. And that philosophy – although we are not perfect – is spread throughout our network.”

Desjardins was founded by Alphonse Desjardins who, in the final years of the 19th century, had a job as a French language stenographer in the House of Commons. In Quebec at that time the banks concentrated on wealthy individuals, and at work one day Desjardins heard a member of Parliament talk about how regular working-class people were being charged interest rates of up to 3,000 per cent. That inequity led him on a quest to find a better solution for average people who needed to tap into finance.

With more than $190 billion in assets, Desjardins is now the biggest financial institution in Quebec and the biggest cooperative financial group in Canada. It is made up of a network of financial services cooperatives, including credit unions, life and general insurance companies as well as securities, venture capital and asset management businesses. It has 5.6 million members and its profits prior to paying out dividends to its members amounted last year to $1.58 billion.

Leroux says that innovation at Desjardins comes from decentralization, with employees at each of the company’s 450-plus caisses contributing ideas. Although her pay package, at nearly $2.1 million, is still 33 times that of the average staff member at the company, it’s one of the lowest ratios among the companies included in the Corporate Knights survey. Desjardins, which has both unionized and non-unionized employees, has a pay equity policy based on the principle of equal pay for equal work. “It is important for employees to have a comparable salary and remuneration,” Leroux says.

Desjardins has chosen to continue offering its employees a defined benefit pension plan at a time when many firms are abandoning the costly retirement vehicles. The plan’s funding status actually improved since the last ranking by Corporate Knights, rising by four percentage points to 70.5 per cent funded.

And the compensation of some executives, such as Serge Cloutier, executive vice-president of cooperative development and democratic governance support, is tied to sustainability targets.

As a result of governance changes, Desjardins’ board of directors is now nearly half women, and the company still has further goals when it comes to improving the diversity in its ranks. This year it formed an advisory committee of 25 elected officers to discuss the evolution of governance.

“It’s a question of having the right mix of people in the ranks of the top management,” says Leroux.

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It’s an interesting discussion, one that begs the question: should there be a minimum age requirement to sit on a corporate board?

The answer, according to most governance experts, is no. Directors at Canadian firms are tasked with overseeing management, weighing in on strategy, and keeping tabs on the company’s finances. Increasingly, they are also recognizing the value of integrating social and environmental considerations into corporate strategy and risk management. And it seems plausible that younger directors would be more in tune with issues such as climate change or the concerns of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. “A lot of MBAs are now learning about sustainability, and so a board is likelier, in recruiting a younger person, to be recruiting somebody who through their education was exposed to sustainability trends and their impacts on the firm,” says Coro Strandberg, a consultant who teaches boards about sustainable leadership and economic innovation, and who herself was a director of Vancity Credit Union throughout her thirties.

The benefits of having a diverse board to discuss such matters have been increasingly recognized, but while much has been written about gender and other personal characteristics, age rarely comes up. That might be because the boardrooms of Canada’s blue chip companies continue to be heavily skewed towards those who were born when you could still buy a new house for $15 000.

Data compiled by Corporate Knights on directors at the companies that make up the S&P/TSX 60—large companies that represent more than two-thirds of Canada’s stock market value—found only four individuals under the age of 40. They include two offspring of the country’s corporate elite: Galen Weston Jr. at Loblaw Companies and Martha Loretta Rogers at Rogers Communications. The youngest director, at 35, is G. Mason Morfit at Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, who is a partner at one of its largest investors. The fourth thirty-something is Nathaniel P. Rothschild of the venerable Rothschild family, a financier based in Switzerland who sits on the board of Barrick Gold. Barrick also has two forty-something directors, Dambisa Moyo, 42, and the company’s CEO, Aaron Regent, who is 45.

Barrick’s founder and chairman, Peter Munk, says that young directors are an asset. “The benefits are enormous. You can’t have [only] a bunch of white old men at the table,” he says, recognizing that young directors ask more questions and are less prepared to accept the status quo. “Revolutions have not been started by people over 60. By definition young people are more questioning of why we do things the way we do,” says Munk. Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), which manages the future pensions of 17 million Canadians, has a formal protocol under which it teams up one of its younger self was named one of Canada’s Top 40 under 40 in 2006, says he is a believer in the benefits of younger directors for companies.

“I’d rather have somebody relatively less experienced who is going to be highly engaged than somebody who is highly experienced but checked out,” he says. “You’re just catching them earlier in their career. They’re just as smart, just as talented, and they’re probably more energetic.” Marc Tellier, who is the CEO and also a director at Yellow Media, became a director of National Bank of Canada, the country’s sixth largest bank, in 2005 when he was only 36. He believes that employee engagement is critical in today’s business climate where employee retention is often a strategic priority. “It was easier, arguably, to manage employee issues back in the late ’70s, when people would join organizations like IBM for life,” he observes.

Young directors can inspire young employees, who are increasingly seeking out employers that share their views on issues such as social and environmental sustainability, and that articulate a corporate vision they support. Having board members who reflect these values can help attract and seed an organization with top talent.

Tellier said that young people are also naturally more in tune with technology and its staggering impact on things like consumption patterns.

Technology is also making it easier for shareholders, consumers and special interest groups.

“Having said that, the nature of the business or organization could favour younger directors, say under 40,” he adds. “If the business is social media or say, skateboard or snowboard manufacturing and sales, the most experienced people in the room could well be the under-40 crowd. At the end of the day, we at the ICD believe that one size doesn’t fit all. We encourage boards to be open-minded about diverse candidates, not for diversity’s sake but because it can introduce an important perspective for better decision-making that will add value to the business or organization.”

The most important credential in choosing directors must be the individual’s match to that specific board’s needs. In the debate over Clinton, Eric Jackson, a founder of Ironfire Capital, wrote in a blog post on Forbes.com that he thinks Clinton was “a terrible choice—not because she’s not smart, not because she’s young, not because of possible favouritism or cronyism, but because she doesn’t have any industry experience or skin in the game.”

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