Sustainability - December 1, 2011

Green Branding, Rankings & Ratings

Branding & the built environment: In a recent blog post from Peter Belisle of Jones Lang LaSalle writes, “The built environment offers many opportunities to reinforce a corporate image. Solar power installations, green roofs and natural vegetative landscaping provide visual reminders to people visiting or passing by a property.            

“It’s also important to engage employees, the group in the best position to confirm or reject a company’s green image.”

Newsweek’s latest green rankings: IBM moved up from No. 3 last time to No. 1 this time. The green rankings, tables of “the top 10” in the United States and internationally and “the bottom 10” for both were posted by GreenBiz.com.

Below: A graphic of the table on the worst in the United States.

The trouble with green product ratings: According to an article on CNN Money, “All products -- no matter how ‘green’ -- impact the planet in some way. The best a consumer index can do is suggest that one product in some particular way might have less of an impact on the planet than another. To achieve this, mountains of data have to be gathered about the impact of thousands of products across every stage of their life cycle, from raw materials and manufacturing to final disposal, while including social factors like workplace conditions.”