HOWZAT

J C Atkinson and Son wins the competition for small companies with high and medium environmental impacts;

Big and mid-sized companies with high environmental impact is won by Carillion, the construction company, ranking second overall;

Big and mid-sized companies with medium environmental impact is won by Co-operative Financial Services, ranking third overall;

Big and mid-sized companies with low environmental impact is won by The National Magazine Company, ranking 10th overall;

Small companies with low environmental impact is won by Loughborough Students’ Union, ranking seventh overall.

While success in any of the contests could not be achieved without involving employees fully in the process, even among the 50 winning companies staff are engaged with varying degrees of success. It is rare for a business to achieve a similar ranking in both the employer and employee survey. Smaller firms tend to score better in the employee survey.

“There is a bigger disconnect between staff and management in the bigger companies,” says Ullstein.“The ‘my boss’ scores fall down in the bigger organisations.”

However, the apparent advantage enjoyed by smaller businesses in this area is balanced out by the greater changes to environmental impact achievable in bigger companies, with sizeable corporate social responsibility departments to formulate green policies. The larger organisations have tended to score better in the employer survey.

The degree of innovation firms are deploying in their efforts to be green surprised Ken Smith, director of environmental management for Bureau Veritas, the consultants and partners involved in devising The Sunday Times Green List.

“Organisations are seeing the benefits of being green in terms of selling themselves to both clients and employees,” Smith says. “I have been surprised by the amount of money being spent on things such as improving processes and the buildings they are operating in.”

Perhaps the key shift in attitudes has occurred among staff, and the more astute companies have responded to that. While a legislative framework increasingly makes environmental demands on businesses, many candidates ask searching questions of their would-be employers at interview.

“The whole positioning of the 50 Best Green Companies survey, with its involvement of employees, shows for the first time ever the importance of bringing them with you,” says Smith.

The green scores (representing the percentage of the maximum possible score) of the employee survey give a fascinating insight into that mindset. Employees have bought into recycling, giving the highest average green score of 90% across all 50 companies for knowing where to put waste for recycling; they don’t believe spending on environmental initiatives is a waste of money (87%) and they have moved beyond associating green issues with beards and sandals (80%).

However, our love of the motor car endures, with the lowest average green score, 44%, earned for travelling to work by private car. Other low scores are returned for turning up the heating rather than putting on a jumper (61%) and ramping up the air-conditioning to keep the office cool (47%).

With British business at the forefront of driving environmental change and cutting carbon emissions, there is much to be proud of. The 50 companies in this supplement represent the peak of excellence.

But Ullstein warns there is much more work to be done. “Companies and employees alike have made fantastic progress in adopting green initiatives, but wholesale changes to corporate behaviour are needed to take the whole process much further.”

% GREEN SCORE
1 Good Energy 88.7%
2 Warren Evans 85.0%
3 Greencare H2O 82.1%
4 Berkeley Homes (Central London) 81.7%
5 Renewable Energy Systems 79.9%
6 ?What If! 79.0%
7 Morgan Lovell 78.0%
8 Saint-Gobain Glass UK 77.5%
9 MCM Architecture 77.0%
10 J C Atkinson and Son 75.8%