The past six months have probably been Toyota's most difficult period ever having suffered monumental damage from Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami which struck the country in March. However, Interbrand has named the automaker the most environmentally sustainable company in its Best Global Green Brands report.
Interbrand, the world's biggest brand consultancy, based its findings on analysis of publicly available information as well as data from Thompson Reuter's ASSET4.
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As Toyota strives to bring production capacity and sales figures back up to pre-disaster levels, Interbrand has recognised its continued contribution to the environment. Alongside developing the world's most popular hybrid car, the Toyota Prius, the company has also implemented internal initiatives including reducing energy use, water consumption, toxic emissions, and waste. Toyota has also recently installed solar panels at its manufacturing facilities in the UK and France and plans to implement wind turbines at its vehicle logistics centre in Belgium.
Multinational conglomerate 3M also performed admirably and wasn't far behind Toyota in second place. It's various initiatives included research into using renewable materials as replacements for petroleum based polymers and monomers in 3M films, fibres, adhesives and molded products. Another contributing factor to its position was the fact it won the 'Energy Star Sustained Excellence Award for Energy Management' for a record sixth time.
Germany-based Siemens came in third as the company is a keen advocate of renewable energy. Siemens Green Buildings programme saves an estimated 23,000 mWh a year, the equivilent of €1,860,000. Its 'One Siemens' framework also aims to build a strong environmental portfolio in the future.
The rest of the top ten (4-10) were Johnson and Johnson, HP, Volkswagen, Honda, Dell, Cisco and Panasonic.
