Of the 18 companies in the aerospace and defense sector of the 2005 Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 1000 whose environmental and sustainability reporting was analyzed by the Roberts Environmental Center in late 2005, Rockwell Collins (US), one of the smallest companies in the group, and Raytheon (US), ten times the size but still less than half as large as Boeing, achieved grades of A+. BAE Systems (UK), a little smaller than Raytheon, achieved a grade of A. Boeing (US), the largest company in the group received a respectable B+, as did Lockheed Martin (US) and United Technologies (US) , the next largest two firms.
The Rockwell Collins report is a textbook example of compact sustainability reporting, short (26 pages), well designed and edited, and containing little extraneous information. Raytheon’s Stewardship Report and BAE Systems Corporate Responsibility Report on the Web are both just a little longer, and are richer in social information than the Rockwell Collins report. All of these are supplemented with hyperlinked web pages, but we particularly like the full edited report format available as downloadable pdfs that they all employ.

These findings are based on the information available on the web sites of all of the companies in these sectors of the 2005 Fortune Global 500 list as of September, 2006. This particular sector report was produced by a single analyst who wrote considerably more detailed critiques of each report than has been our custom. We would appreciate feedback from anyone who has an opinion about this change.