Survey Says Intel Is Green, Apple Not Green at All

There’s an interesting survey Business Week reports on today about how environmentally-conscious the largest consumer-oriented corporations are. And unfortunately some of our favorite names will probably have to be reconsidered if you really want to support only companies that try to fight global warming and preserve our planet as it is.

The study has been carried out by Ceres, an alliance of investors and environmentalists and has addressed the environment policies of 63 largest consumer and IT corporations in the world. The report ranked the corporations based on a number of criteria: cutting greenhouse gas emissions, trying to use energy more efficiently, coming up with and supporting climate-change initiatives.

Of course such surveys are not carried out only to find out which company is the most environmentally-friendly: in fact, since many investors are concerned about the profitability of their portfolio companies, they are naturally inclined to know what liability a corporation could face if the business was found to be not in compliance with the environmental standards. The highest mark a company could earn was 100 and as many as half of the reviewed companies got less than 50 points so it must show that we buy things from companies that don’t really care about the climate changes more often than not.

But now that the trend is here companies that produce consumer goods or deal with consumers directly need to remember that people are growing more and more environmentally-aware and they increasingly demand that the products they purchase are produced using practices that are safe for the climate and the environment. So positioning a company as a green one can be a huge advantage as it will significantly improve the company’s reputation - and probably the demand for its products, especially compared to their less environmentally friendly competitors.

Now the winners (the companies with the highest marks) are IBM, Tesco, and Dell - note that two of them are technology companies. In fact, three of the most important tech brands have shown good results and progress in the process of going green: IBM, Dell, and Intel as well are told to demonstrate notable efforts in efficient energy spending on all fronts - their operations, their data centers, and their products as well.

But when it comes to the companies that are not particularly determined to avoid harming the environment with their businesses, the bottom three are Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Abercrombie & Fitch. And do you remember everyone’s favorite (at least in the tech blogosphere) Apple? You’d think it’s a very green company, especially after its constant claims about how green Apple products are but unfortunately it is not exactly so: Apple only scored 28 points out of 100. To get to this low position Apple committed quite a number of wrongdoings.

First of all, when a shareholder proposed creating a committee on sustainability, the company voted against the proposal. Also Apple has not conducted an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions and has not even set targets for its own operations in terms of environmental friendliness. But while the company did not really intend to track its own carbon footprint, it is here to help us, the consumers, know exactly how green (or not green) we are when using their products: back in October Apple released a carbon footprint, energy efficiency, and packaging details for each of its product lines so that we are perfectly aware what we buy.

And while I fully realize that Apple fans will hardly ever believe their perfect Steve Jobs-headed manufacturer can be far from perfect in anything, I do hope that getting ranked low like this will at the very least finally push Apple to calculate and set their targets to reduce carbon emissions. After all, when you are responsible for what many people on this planet consume, you should also realize that with this leadership comes responsibility - including the responsibility for trying to keep the climate undamaged by your activities as much as possible.

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