Do Newsweek's Corporate Green Ratings Matter?

There are already a bunch of organizations (Fortune, the EPA, Greenpeace) which score American corporations on their environmental and social responsibility efforts. But this looks like the most ambitious effort to date by an authoritative third party.

Newsweek has ranked every company in the S&P 500 to determine the greenest large corporations in America. Their top 10 are HP, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Intel, IBM, State Street, Nike, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Applied Materials and Starbucks. Ideally, rankings like this will cause corporations to take real steps towards sustainability as they fight for customers and talent. Such a green arms race could theoretically save the planet and the American economy.

The magazine pulled in some heavyweights from academia (Yale's Dan Esty), the nonprofit sector (John Steelman of NRDC) and the CSR consulting world to help them develop their methodology, which primarily factors in greenhouse gas emissions, water use, solid waste disposed and acid rain emissions. The data was normalized by revenue to allow comparisons between corporations of varying sizes.

But the apples and oranges issue will nonetheless fuel the debate over the validity of Newsweek's effort, as green business consultant Joel Makover has noted:

It may not be surprising that half of the top-10 rated companies (as well as half of the top 20) are technology firms, and that 8 of the 10 lowest-rated are energy utility or coal-mining companies. That makes sense: Most tech companies don't actually manufacture anything themselves these days -- they mostly purchase components from other manufacturers -- while utilities and mining companies are known to make quite a mess, in terms of emissions and other impacts.

If most people don't really buy into these rankings, Newsweek may sell a few more magazines as the world keeps on turning as before. Please share whether you think these rankings will make a difference in the comments section below.