Canon emerges as green champion

Canon is making a greater effort to reverse climate change than any other large consumer company operating in the US and UK, according to an independent report published this week.

The Company Scorecard Report, from non-profit organisation Climate Counts, is based on benchmarks of company commitments and actions to reverse climate change, rather than relative carbon footprints.

The survey of 56 firms spanned electronics and computers, media, internet and software, household products, apparel and food.

Canon scored 77 out of 100 in a stringent series of 22 criteria drawn from scientifically accepted climate and corporate performance tools.

In second, third and fourth positions in the survey were sports apparel firm Nike (73), household product conglomerate Unilever (71) and computer systems and services heavyweight IBM (70).

Companies in the electronics and computer sector generally did well in the rankings, with six out of 12 scoring 50 points or higher.

But online retailer Amazon and US media house CBS scored zero points, in company at the wrong end of the rankings with the likes of fast-food chains Burger King and Wendy's. Apple and eBay did little better with a score of just two points each.

"Apple stands out among the scored companies in the [electronics and computer] sector by lagging so significantly [27 points] behind the next highest scorer," said the Climate Counts report.

"Amazon.com and eBay, despite being clear powerhouses in the arena of online commerce, have not yet translated their spirit of innovation to taking public corporate action on climate protection."

Despite their superficial appearance of being low-carbon outfits, companies in the software and internet sector did not score highly.

Top of the green internet companies was Yahoo (36), followed by Microsoft (31) and Google (17).

"Yahoo has been committed to offsetting emissions, but in the Climate Counts scoring system, offsetting emissions does not earn as many points as other activities that directly reduce greenhouse gas emissions," said the report.