Climate Counts places IBM top of green ratings

Climate Counts, an eco-lobby group, has published green ratings for businesses, including major players in the IT sector.

IBM heads the green rating scorecard in the IT category, while eBay, Amazon and Apple are at the bottom.

Climate Counts is funded by organic food company Stonyfield Yogurt, and Clean Air-Cool Planet (CA-CP), a non-profit organisation based in the US. CA-CP aims to find and promote solutions to global warming.

The two companies worked with US-consultancy GreenOrder to devise the rating scheme.

Climate Counts’ ratings are based on a 0-to-100 point scale. Companies are measured against 22 criteria to determine their strategy on green issues.

The criteria look at whether a company has taken action on various environmental issues, such as measuring its climate footprint and reducing its global warming impact.

The companies that score most highly on the ratings are the ones most committed to fighting global warming.

In the IT sector, IBM scored 70, HP 59, Sony 51, Dell 41, Yahoo! 36, Hitachi 36, Microsoft 31, Google 17, eBay 2, Apple 2 and Amazon zero.

The ratings do not seem to represent the efforts some of the companies are making to address environmental issues.

Google, for example, only scored 17 even though it recently partnered with the Climate Group in an effort to become carbon-neutral by 2008.