Greenpeace has unveiled its 17th Greener Electronics Guide in which Hewlett Packard leads over such electronic brands as Dell and Nokia.

Photo: a snapshot from www.greenpeace.org

HP was ranked No.1 green electronic company for 2011 gaining a score of 5.9 out of 10. Greenpeace’s ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’ ranks brands across three categories: energy, greener products and sustainable operations.

HP has swiped the first position from the former top brand Nokia, which was ranked No.3 this year places, scoring 4.9 out of 10 because its energy criteria had let it down.

This year’s guide has new evaluation criteria for companies including estimation of their carbon footprint in manufacturing, in supply chains and through to the end-of-life phase of their products as well as how they use renewable energy.

HP’s scoring card showed that the company succeeded in the sustainable operations and energy criteria, as a result of its work to reduce carbon emissions and implement climate legislation. But Greenpeace gave HP a piece of advice: it should improve in the green products criteria. By the way, this is an area Nokia did it best.

No. 2 company, Dell scored 5.1 out of 10, due to its target to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2015 and its energy criteria but, like HP, it still lacks of its green products.

No.4, Apple was ranked only 4.6 out of 10, though it is up five places this time. Apple was praised relatively strong on sustainable operations, but scored poorly on energy.

As No.5 comes Philips with 4.5 points for supporting progressive clean energy policy and on energy criteria overall but it’s down two places.

Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Lenovo, Panasonic, Sony, Sharp, Acer, LG and Toshiba follow the list correspondingly. The last position in the list ranks Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) that was included in the list for the first time. Greenpeace comments that this company needs to «improve reporting and disclosure of its environmental performance compared to other mobile phone makers,« but praises the company for its conflict materials and sustainable paper policy.

The full guide can be downloaded here.

Greenpeace continues to make big companies ‘think’. This year it rolled out a global ‘Detox’ campaign to motivate apparel brands like adidas, Nike and H&M eliminating hazardous elements out of its products and pushed Mattel to new sustainable sourcing principles after a scandal with its Barbie.