Recently, the only phrase in popular American vernacular that is more overused than "in this economy" is "green company". It seems like ever since the release of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, the entire business world has been bending over backwards to make sure that everyone knows how much paper is recycled, or how few heavy metals go into products. Greenpeace has already called out a few gaming manufacturers for not exactly being Mother Earth's best friend, and a recent report by Newsweek ranking the top 500 green companies has called some more big name gaming companies to the carpet.

The game company that fared the worst on the list was Activision Blizzard, which came in at number 416. Just by way of comparison, ExxonMobil, a company best known for obscene profits and massive oil spills, sits at number 395. Slightly better, although still further down on the list than I'm sure they are comfortable with, are Electronic Arts (#381) and GameStop (#228). And before you start thinking that electronics companies can't win in this kind of list, take note that four out of the top five greenest companies are Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel and IBM. Interestingly, almost all of the ten worst companies are energy producers.

The magazine took several factors into consideration, including each company's stated policies, environmental impact, and social responsibility reputation. And while it's not overly shocking that game companies have a larger carbon footprint than some other companies, it does stand out a bit that Activision Blizzard has a worse green rating than ExxonMobil, a company almost universally reviled as representative of everything that's bad about business. It will be interesting to see if these companies take any measures to improve themselves for next year.

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