Who's the leader of the pack? The power of green awards. By Peter Judge

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Nov 1 2010)

1. 

   It must be the time of year for lists of green tech companies. No sooner does Greenpeace publish its Guide to Greener Electronics, than WWF publishes a report on Low Carbon Leadership in the ICT industry,

    

   Both list tech companies in order of how they are seen to be doing on environmental issues. But they are different lists.

    

   The Greenpeace guide is about consumer products - it is aimed at telling consumers how green their phone maker is. While the WWF report - that’s World Wide Fund for Nature, not the other WWF - has been put together with analyst firm Gartner, to gauge the performance of business IT providers.

    

   So at least the two organisations aren’t going to be battling over whose list is best, which is a relief.

    

   In the consumer space, Greenpeace is checking how quickly manufacturers are phasing out potentially harmful chemicals like PVC and BFR, and how well they are doing on recycling and reducing waste. The leaders are Nokia and Sony Ericsson, Microsoft and Nintendo come bottom, and Apple is, well, just very average.

    

   While other makers increased their green credentials, Apple dropped from number 5 to number 9, mainly because it was not improving things as fast as others.

    

   Meanwhile, the WWF/Gartner survey addresses the business of large ICT players, and assesses how well companies manage energy use in their own supply chains, as well as how committed they are to helping their customers become more efficient.

    

   The WWF/Gartner report invited 28 big ICT players and persuaded 19 to actually take part. It’s not much of a surprise to see IBM at the top of the list - given the company’s very public support for sustainability at its Start Summit, and its promotion of sensors and analytics to make processes more efficient.

    

   Others near the top of the WWF/Gartner list include Fujitsu, HP (another company big on sensors networks) and BT (which has a programme of wind generation for its remote plants).

    

   The two listings illustrate very well the difference between the consumer world and the business tech world. The consumer space is about a miriad of tiny decisions, and so consumer power can add up to something quite powerful.

    

   If a lot of green-conscious consumers voted with their feet, and bought phones at least partly on the basis of the carbon footprint, then the manufacturers would wake up fairly quickly. The fact that Samsung has worked hard to climb the rankings this year perhaps indicates there is power in the green consumer lobby - though the way Apple has been content to slide suggests that we shouldn’t expect too much of consumers and vendors.

    

   Meanwhile, business tech is a more long term game, and decisions don’t get made quickly - though it is quite possible the customer base will be more clued up about energy, and more likely to factor it into decisions, since they are talking about services and installations that use MegaWatts.

    

   So getting a good position on the WWF/Gartner list could have solid long term benefits too.

    

   It seems these awards are worth winning - and if they really do inspire better behaviour in the companies contending for them, they’ll also benefit the rest of us.

    

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