50 top green brands

Thursday, 4 August 2011

Have you ever wondered which global brands are the most green? One of the world’s leading brand consultancies, Interbrand, decided to list the 50 best global green brands and recently released their report.

Top of the list is Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota. Technology company 3M is in second place while electronic powerhouse Siemens made third place.

This is Interbrand’s first global report to focus on the environment and companies worldwide, and includes public perception of environmental sustainability as well as actual performance and available information, reports www.greentimes.co.za.

The 2010 Best Global Brands report details how the top green companies continuously seek to differentiate themselves and engage in green activities deemed useful by consumers, as well as the implementation of green practices and introducing environmental programmes.

Jez Frampton, global CEO at Interbrand comments: “As corporate citizenship increasingly becomes the norm, green initiatives may be among the most visible and easiest to claim and yet, can be the most challenging to deliver performance against.”

Local group chairperson, Jeremy Sampson, says there is much uncertainty about what “sustainability” and “green” really mean and believes the report will help clear this up.

As part of the study, Interbrand surveyed consumers in the 10 largest markets: the US, Japan, China, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Brazil, Spain and India; asking them how the environment affected their purchasing decisions and how aware they were of companies’ green activities.

Among the findings in the report were that Toyota was a leading example of how a company could make the environment a core management priority while engaging with a global audience in a meaningful way.

Other companies, like L’Oréal, Nokia and HSBC all did well when it came to performance but lost points in the perception arena, suggesting that these efforts were not communicated to the public as well as they could be.

On the other hand, companies like McDonald’s, GE and Coca-Cola scored better when it came to perception. The full ranking is available on www.interbrand.com