Green Metrics

Following on from recent posts about greenwash and whether big businesses are doing enough, the Harvard Business Review has posted a blog about green metrics. They ask the question:

Who's greener: a computer manufacturer with revenues of $61 billion planting a tree for every computer sold, or the world's largest retailer with revenues of $380 billion demanding environmental transparency and performance improvements from all of its suppliers?

The authors - Nicholas Eisenberger and Mateo Bueno - think it's clear: it's the second one which, in fact, is WalMart. The first company - Dell - is making emissions offsets yet it pales into insignificance to the impact WalMart will have. Yet, Newsweek argued Dell was ahead of WalMart. Why? According to the authors it was because Newsweek were using a flawed metric on measuring on who was doing less bad.