It’s not easy being green. Even for Apple. Climate Counts, a nonprofit group funded by organic food company Stonyfield Farm Inc., has released its annual “scorecards,” which examine how companies are working to be more environmentally friendly. 

Climate Counts rates companies on a scale of one to 100, based on 22 criteria that examine whether companies are measuring their “climate footprints,” reducing their impact on global warming, supporting progressive climate legislation and publicly disclosing their progress in these areas. 

Apple Inc. received the lowest score of the electronics companies reviewed. Just two points out of a possible 100. I’ve had the displeasure of watching far too many of those “Hi, I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC” commercials. The actor playing the Mac is the young hip guy. It’s the PC who is the stodgy, older fellow who is afraid of change. And Apple has also brought us the iPod, which a fine piece of consumerism that every hipster has clipped on his or her hip.  

So why isn’t Apple, the company with all the hip products, “with it” on climate change? It received an anemic total of two points for its stated intention to review the overall impact its products have on global warming and its plan to release the data later this year.  Compare that with IBM, which scored the highest among the IT vendors reviewed with 70 points. Toshiba followed with 66 points. Hewlett-Packard received 59 points, and Dell was in the middle of the pack with 41. Canon, better known for cameras, printer and copiers, led all electronics firms with 77 points. 

Apple has been repeatedly dumped on for its environmental policy. Greenpeace has launched a campaign, Green My Apple, specifically targeted at forcing Apple to become more environmentally friendly. Apple does have a page on its Web site that describes what the company is doing to be more environmentally friendly. But apparently its efforts haven’t impressed.  

In a separate category for Internet and software companies, eBay and Amazon.com stunk up the joint, with two and zero points respectively. Yahoo led the category with 36 points, followed by Microsoft with 31. Google, the ubiquitous search and online application behemoth, scored a middling 17 points. Google’s mediocre score promises to rise simply by virtue of the extremely ambitious announcement it made this week. Google said it will make itself carbon neutral by the end of this year.  As reported by GreenBiz.com: 

“In an announcement made this afternoon, the company said it had calculated the total amount of its GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions through operations, employee commuting and business travel, construction and the manufacturing of its servers. Tallying the carbon footprint is Google’s first step in its mission to reduce and offset all its GHG emissions.” 

This is promising news from Google, but as Foreign Policy blogger Prerna Mankad pointed out: 

“Sergey Brin and Larry Page may want to reconsider jetting around in their personal Boeing 767.”  

In other words, Google’s billionaire executives might want to lead by example.