Some companies manage to keep looking green no matter how tarnished they are. This list highlights brands with poor green practices but strong green halos that color peoples’ perceptions of them. Many are beloved household brands, such as Smucker’s and Rubbermaid. And some are just lucky to have a name that sounds like another company with a good reputation. To land on this list, companies had to rank among the bottom 25 percent in the Green Rankings, but score above average in the Green Brands survey. They are ordered according to the size of the gap between their Newsweek Green Score and their Green Brands Reputation Score (both scores are out of 100).
The Reputation Score is based on the 2012 Green Brands Survey. Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), in conjunction with Landor Associates, conducted an online poll of 8,743 Americans 18 and older. The data were weighted to ensure a representative sample of the U.S. population. The study has an overall margin of error of +/-1 percent. Each respondent was asked to evaluate a random selection of 13-15 major brands with which they were familiar, on questions pertaining to qualities of the brand and its “green” behavior. Data were collected about the largest 215 U.S. consumer-facing brands and 36 major foreign consumer brands. PSB then calculated the Reputation Score based on these responses.
Check out the complete results of the 2012 Green Brands survey to see the full list of companies ranked by their consumer reputation.