Owens Corning takes top spot on '100 Best Corporate Citizens List' from 3BL Media
Owens Corning once again took the top spot in an annual ranking of companies that follow the best practices in corporate responsibility.

The ranking of the "100 Best Corporate Citizens," which has been published since 1999, comes from 3BL Media, a communications platform that evaluates companies based on ESG, or environmental, social and governance, metrics.

Citigroup , General Mills , Cisco Systems and HP round out the list of the top five corporate citizens, according to the new list.

ESG investing is growing in popularity as consumers demand more transparency from companies on areas like carbon footprint reduction as well as boardroom diversity. Far from just a moral issue, experts warn that in order for companies to survive in a rapidly changing world, companies must think critically about these factors.

"Companies are finding that it's economically advantageous to embrace ESG. ...There's much more interest at the board level and in the C-suite than there ever has been before," said 3BL Media CEO Dave Armon. "ESG is something that investors care about as well as [company] employees — that's a huge constituency for them — and customers as well."

In order to compile its list, 3BL Media surveys the 1,000 largest publicly traded U.S. companies, and each company is evaluated on 141 factors divided into eight pillars: climate change, employee relations, environment, ESG performance, financial, governance, human rights and stakeholders and society.

The company's custom methodology and weightings for each category is supported by research from Institutional Shareholders Services. All of the information comes from publicly available resources, such as securities filings and annual reports.