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Green your portfolio with top sustainable stocks

(Jul 26, 2007) Want to invest in a greener world? Here are some enviro-friendly stocks worth checking out.

Recently SustainableBusiness.com announced its 2007 Sustainable Business 20 (SB20) List: The World’s Top Sustainable Stocks. Comprised of twenty of most innovative companies, the list includes those who have either gone green or are developing green technology.

"Our goal is to create a list that showcases public companies that, over the past year, have made substantial progress in either greening their internal operations or growing a business based on an important green technology," says Rona Fried, Ph.D., SustainableBusiness.com CEO.

In order to determine the SB20, SustainableBusiness.com partnered with KLD Research & Analytics, a leading provider of environmental, social and governance research and indexes.

TOP SB20 WINNERS
Category: Energy Efficiency
This energy efficiency took center stage because offers the least expensive, best economic returns and most dramatic ways to reduce greenhouse emissions simply by reducing energy consumption in the first place.

Comverge sells energy-management technologies, which automatically turn power on and off when demand exceeds supply on the grid. (Nasdaq: COMV) (USA)

Royal Philips Electronics has been buying markets shares in LED lighting while it prepares to stop producing inefficient incandescents. NV (NYSE: PHG)

Fuel Tech has technology that cleans up the dirtiest fossil fuel plants (Nasdaq: FTEK) (USA)

Novozymes is a world leader in "green chemicals," a pioneer in the use of cellulosic biofuels and reducing toxics by replacing synthetic ingredients with biological enzymes. (Copenhagen: NZYM.CO) Denmark

Category: Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Corp (REC) is the most vertically integrated solar company in the world. (Oslo: REC.OL) Norway

First Solar is the first public company to integrate thin film technology into high volume, low cost production. (Nasdaq: FSLR) (USA)

Vestas, the world’s premier wind company, maintained its leadership position. (Copenhagen: VWS.CO) Denmark

Ormat became a world leader in geothermal energy. (NYSE: ORA) (USA)

Schmack Biogas is the world's leading biogas plant manufacturer, turning organic wastes into electricity, heat or fuels. AG (Germany: SB1B.DE) Germany

Category: Natural Resources: Water, Forests

BWT Water Technology (Vienna: BWT.VI) (Austria) uses only environmentally responsible technologies like a new water filter forhouseholds and relies on magnetic fields instead of chemicals.

Precious Woods is the world’s only publicly traded sustainable forestry company, operating in the Brazilian and Congo rainforests. (Geneva: SWX: PRWN) Swizerland

Category: Green Building

Land Securities, UK's largest property developer and owner is requiring that all new buildings be green building standards while working towards company-wide use of gray water, rainwater harvesting systems, using only FSC-certified wood, and serving Fair Trade/ Organic foods in its cafeterias. (London: Land.L) Britain

• Not your parent’s solar panels
• Eric Lange: transforming an energy glutton with geothermal energy
• Part two: Solar energy is the hot power source
• Part one: Solar energy is the hot power source
• Edible plastic and other miracles

Interface remains one of the most respected and continues to create green materials and processes used to make carpet tiles. (Nasdaq: IFSIA) (USA)

Herman Miller furniture maker is 63 percent on its way to achieving its goal of Zero Ecological Footprint by 2020. (Nasdaq: MLHR) (USA)

Category: Consumer Products

Canon set aggressive targets to cut C02 emissions by 50 percent per unit by 2010 and is making smaller and lighter products to reduce its environmental footprint. (NYSE: CAJ) (Japan)

Nike is slowly transforming its products using green design principles, rooting out toxic water and planning for carbon neutrality by 2015. A daunting task for a company whose manufacturing is outsourced. (NYSE: NKE) (USA)

Category: Natural Foods/ Natural Products

Groupe Danone, the world's largest dairy company, is converting more to organic dairy and sustainable agriculture. It’s newly launched Grameen Danone Foods, a joint venture with microfinance bank Grameen Group, will provide nutritionally dense, basic foods, solar energy and biogas to deprived populations in Bangladesh. (DANO.PA) Netherlands

WholeFoods (Nasdaq: WFMI) (USA) and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR) (USA) remain exemplary models all around. Both are responsible for mainstreaming of natural foods and sustainable coffee.

Chipotle Mexican Grill, a fast food chain with over 600 restaurants, has started serving free range meats and integrating organic ingredients into its menus. (NYSE: CMG) (USA)

Honorable Mention

Google will be climate neutral by 2008 and has co-founded the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, an industry challenge to ramp up energy-efficient personal computers and server systems to 90 percent efficiency by 2010. It just turned on the switch for the first phase of its 1.6 megawatt solar array and runs the largest employee shuttle commuter program in the U.S., while offering employees cash incentives to purchase hybrids. Google, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG)

The SB20 2007 Judges

Andrew Brengle, Senior Research Analyst, KLD Research & Analytics

Rafael Coven, Managing Partner, Cleantech Indices LLC

Matt Patsky, Managing Director, Winslow Green Growth Fund

Patrick McVeigh, President, Reynders, McVeigh Capital Management

Max Deml, Editor & Publisher, Oeko Invest Publishing Ltd

Ton Rennen, Senior Sustainability Analyst, Triodos Bank NV

The list was presented in the Progressive Investor newsletter, published by SustainableBusiness.com, which tracks sustainable stocks.



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