Tech companies dominated the top of Newsweek's "Green Rankings 2009", but Apple came in #133 overall and had an undistinguished middle-of-the-pack position within the tech sector. Its response to this and other mediocre ratings as a green enterprise doesn't do the company or its customers* credit.

Apple has always gotten mixed reviews from the environmental community. Greenpeace, for example, has been unimpressed with Apple's overall enterprise record while defending Apple's newer products against competitors' attacks.

Apple decided to go on the attack in September, with lots of green PR, new content on its web site, and a rare Steve Jobs interview with Business Week. The essence of Job's argument is that is more important to focus on initiatives like effecting change within Apple's customer base than within the company's own operations. "While environmentalists tend to focus on carbon emissions from corporate operations and companies' publicly stated goals to do better, Jobs says Apple wants to set the pace in addressing what he says is a bigger challenge: reducing the amount of power required to run the company's products."

This appears to be an instinctive application of Apple's competitive strategy: don't play someone else's game, define your own. That's god business, but questionable CSR. After all, the 'S' does stand for 'social'.

It also appears to be a return to the old Apple-as-a-religion stance: the virtue of what I'm doing for the masses excuses what I am doing myself. Even Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook comes off sounding sanctimonious in the above-referenced interview article as he belittles the enterprise sustainability efforts of others.

No one will deny that businesses, particularly consumer businesses, are in a unique position to leverage sustainability beyond their own enterprises out into their supply chains, channels of distribution, and customer bases. But Apple is not unique in pursuing external leverage, so why is Apple making it an either-or proposition? Why not do both and set a standard for both internal and customer sustainability leadership?

Come on, Steve. You're a clever guy with wads of cash, a dedicated workforce, supportive stakeholders, and a new liver. How hard can it be?