Dell, HP, IBM, J&J, Intel Top Newsweek's Green Rankings

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Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and Intel are the top five leaders in Newsweek's environmental ranking of the 500 largest U.S. companies. These same five companies topped the publication's inaugural Green Rankings in 2009.

Newsweek's Green Rankings 2010 also ranked the top 100 environmentally-friendly biggest global corporations. The top five are IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Sony and GlaxoSmithkline.

Dell, ranked No. 1, earned high marks for its strong environmental policies, including free recycling of products worldwide and a ban on the export of e-waste to developing countries, together with designing PCs and laptops that consume 25 percent less energy than systems produced in 2008, reports Newsweek. Dell estimates these efforts, along with others, have saved its customers more than $5 billion in energy costs over the past few years.

Newsweek says tech companies dominated this year's Green Rankings in part because they make low-impact products, like software, that have a smaller environmental footprint than for example utilities. Still, the big drivers for high-tech companies is bottom-line considerations.

As examples, Hewlett-Packard, ranked No. 2, says its current IT systems use 66 percent less energy than those designed in 2005, and Yahoo, No. 9, is designing environmentally sustainable data centers, like Facebook and eBay, including a new facility in New York that consumes 40 percent less electricity and 94 percent less water.

Newsweek worked with MSCI ESG Research, Trucost, and CorporateRegister.com to evaluate the companies based on their environmental impact, green policies and reputation.

The rankings were based on a 100-point scale,  using a weighted average for each of the three components: 45 percent for the Environmental Impact Score, 45 percent for the Green Policies Score, and 10 percent for the Reputation Survey.

Two changes were made this year including a measure of how much data each company discloses in its Environmental Impact Score, and for financial-services firms Newsweek considered the environmental footprint of companies in their investment and lending portfolios.

Newsweek says because of these changes, the scores are not comparable to the 2009 rankings.

Click here for the complete list of the top U.S. green companies, and here for the top 100 global green companies.

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