Last week, Newsweek launched the 2^nd Annual Green Rankings, a collaborative effort to comprehensively evaluate the environmental performance of the world's largest companies through an assessment of their impacts, policies and procedures, and reputation.Trucost provides the data and expertise behind the environmental impact portion of the Green Rankings.

Again this year, the Green Rankings have caused quite a stir.

Companies have responded:

I have spoken to an overwhelming number of sustainability officers at companies where the Newsweek Green Rankings received the attention of their top level management/shareholders.In Joel Makower's recent piece he related a similar experience with regards to the level of interest

A couple weeks ago, when about 30 senior sustainability executives gathered in Milwaukee for a meeting of our GreenBiz Executive Network, I asked members how many knew their company's 2009 Newsweek Green Ranking. Damn near every one could cite it blindly. The rankings, it seems, have become a major metric in corporate America.

Since the launch, dozens of companies have put out press releases touting their performance in the Green Rankings.

Publicly, Michael Dell CEO of top performing Dell computer put out a release responding to the Green Rankings. "The efficiencies we can all achieve through the use of greener products, solutions, services and programs should be an integral part of every corporate culture. This ranking is the result of a long-standing commitment that remains at the heart of Dell and the work we do in service of our customers."

Intel recently blogged about the Green Rankings and their performance (Intel placed 4^th in last year's US500 Green Rankings, 5^th this year).  "Next year, even if we improved our performance, we could just as easily find ourselves at #15 as other companies continue to improve their performance and raise the bar even higher.  And that would really be just fine - because in the end, isn't that the point?"

There were early signs that companies were paying attention.  Ahead of the calculation of the rankings, companies were very engaged in the research process.  Of the companies in the US 500 rankings this year 42% actively provided feedback and data to this year's analysis, as did 45% of the companies in the inaugural Global 100 rankings.  When combined with the public company disclosures that was incorporated into our research - a total of 52% of the companies in the US 500 rankings disclosed some environmental performance data, as did 83% of the companies in the Global 100.  In itself a testament showing how important a benchmark the Newsweek Green Rankings are becoming to company managers.

And companies not included in the 2010 Green Rankings are also talking, including Timberland's CEO Jeff Swartz.  In a recent blog he authored for GreenBiz he wrote about the Green Rankings and the need for expanding this kind of analysis further towards measures of sustainability concluding:"At the end of the day, the lists have value and companies doing good green things need to be recognized. We just need to find a way to make them more valuable, more broadly."

It's quite heartening that the Green Rankings is showing that there is interest in improving environmental performance and decreasing environmental exposure and risk in the C-Suite of leading companies, hopefully that interest will continue and contribute to meaningful change towards greater environmental sustainability.

In addition to the response in the corporate world:

NGOs have commented:

GreenPeace put out a response to the Green Rankings (they have a regular ranking of IT sector companies themselves), urging for greater leadership, and to advocate for strong political action to combat climate change.

Media outlets have responded to the release:

There has been pickup including in the USA Today, The Telegraph, FastCompany, Maximum PC, SmartPlanet, Earth911, Sustainable Business, TreeHugger, The Motley Fool, and CNet, which particularly highlight that technology companies dominate the top positions, particularly in the US 500 ranking.

GreenBiz posted three pieces, overviewing the results, Joel Makower's solid analysis of the Green Rankings and results, and a piece touting the need for greater company disclosure. The Mother Nature Network also put out a longer piece on the rankings.

A piece on CSRwire noted that "three out of the four US companies with the largest carbon-reduction programs with Carbonfund.org--Dell, Staples and Motorola--are ranked in the top of Newsweek's latest green rankings for US companies".

The implications for investment have been debated:

This includes an interview of Trucost's own Cary Krosinsky with leading sustainability journalist Mark Gunther, and an excellent piece by Tom Konrad on Seeking Alpha analyzing whether "greener" companies and sectors beat the market, or conversely if the least green companies and sectors underperformed the market.

I expect to see continued dialogue and debate surrounding the Green Rankings, and that's a very good thing.  Thought and conversation can lead to action, and action is needed to move the needle towards more environmentally efficient organizations and sustainability overall.

 

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