IN GREENPEACE’S completely arbitrary yet terribly important ranking of consumer electronic firms released today, Toshiba and Samsung topped the green list, due to their recycling policies and low amounts of toxic materials in their products.

Samsung had topped the previous green list, but Toshiba made an incredible six rank jump this time around to tie first place with them. This was mainly attributed to the fact that it had made huge strides towards better disposing of electronic waste generated when customers threw out Toshiba products.

Nokia, which would have topped the rankings, was castigated and given a right old telling off by the eco-mentalists for still not being up to scratch on its take-back recycling program. Previously, Greenpeace had discovered that Nokia staff in the Philippines, Thailand, Argentina, Russia, and India hadn’t ever even heard of the programme, and details hadn’t been printed up in local languages. For shame.

Apple was the highest riser in the new rankings, shooting up from a very lame and toxic score of 2.7 in August 2006, to 6.7 this time around. Greenpeace said that the leap was down to the fact that new Apple products (like the MacBook Air) are significantly less poisonous than their previous offerings, presumably because they contain nothing but lovely, hot air.

Nintendo came last in today’s rankings, because, according to Greenpeace, they refuse to divulge any information whatsoever about their environmental policies, save details of office recycling. Still it wasn’t all bad news for the Japanese company. They did manage to go up to the rank of 0.3 from 0.

At the beginning of March, Greenpeace had made its lentil-scented presence felt at the Cebit electronics show in Hannover, Germany, where it called on all consumer electronics companies to do better in all aspects of being environmentally friendly, saving baby polar bears and not using harsh language on vegetarians. µ

L'Inq
Greenpeace ranking