Newsweek: IT companies go green in a big way

Newsweek has released its first annual Green Rankings report of the nation's largest 500 companies based on their environmental performance, policies and reputation.

Technology companies are very prominent on the list. They comprise 10 of the top 20, and have a big presence in the top 100. Hewlett Packard ranked No. 1 and received a 100 percent score, followed by No. 2 Dell with a 98.87 tally. Newsweek recognized HP as the greenest company in America for a number of reasons. HP pays consumers to ship back obsolete machines, allowing the company to reclaim 1.7 billion pounds of e-waste during the past decade. In the process, it has reclaimed and resold valuable gold and copper.

HP was also lauded for reducing packaging materials, for having a solid program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and for using renewable energy. Dell's headquarters uses 100 percent renewable energy, and all of its desktop and laptop computers will consume up to 25 percent less energy by 2010. The company also became carbon neutral in 2008 by using offsets and other methods.

Intel, No. 4 in the Newsweek ranking, was praised for tying every employee's annual bonus, in part, to how well the company does in meeting sustainability goals. IBM, ranked No. 5, is spending $1 billion a year to double the capacity of data centers by 2010 without increasing their power consumption.

Other tech firms included in the top 20 green company list were Applied Materials, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Sprint Nextel, Adobe Systems and Advanced Micro Devices.

To read the Newsweek story and look at the rankings:
- see this article [1]