WELCOME to The Sunday Times Green List 2009, our annual competition to find companies that are striving to improve their environmental performance.

We launched this venture last year to reflect the changing mood in the business world. Today it is not enough simply to make a profit for shareholders. Companies have a wider responsibility to ensure that they minimise the environmental impact of what they do. Despite the economic downturn, consumers, clients and peers expect it. This year, we have added new questions to assess how far companies have embedded green policies and initiatives into supply chains. The result is the presence of high street names in the Green List for the first time.

The 60 companies listed are all at the forefront of efforts to produce real environmental change — enterprising, enlightened and fizzing with new ideas. They vary from Wiles Greenworld, an office supplies company employing just 50 people, to the supermarket giant Tesco, which has a staff of 185,000. All have a common sense of purpose about their corporate social responsibility.

Our Best Green Companies venture is unique. There may be plenty of environmental awards, but this is the first that has a robust methodology to measure environmental performance and to survey staff to find out whether the green sheen is more than skin deep. The views of just under 21,000 employees are included this year.

Although 98 organisations registered for the competition, a number fell by the wayside. So be it. When we launched The Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For nine years ago there was similar hesitation at the idea of asking staff what they thought of their employer, and publishing the results in a newspaper. Today it is Britain’s biggest national survey of employee satisfaction.

I have no doubt that hundreds of firms will read our report and will be clamouring to join our Green List 2010.

I am grateful to our research partners Bureau Veritas and Munro Global for their hard work in co-producing our survey, and I thank our sponsors Lloyds TSB for recognising the value of this venture.

RICHARD CASEBY
Managing Editor
The Sunday Times