Nokia has been hailed as the world's greenest electronics company, following the publication this week of the latest edition of Greenpeace's Guide to Greener Electronics.

The mobile phone giant regained the top spot from rival Sony Ericsson after undertaking improvements to its e-waste take-back programme in India – an issue singled out in the previous edition of the list.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Greenpeace's electronics campaigner Zeina Alhajj hailed the move as further evidence that manufacturers are paying attention to the list and making improvements to their environmental policies to try to occupy the top places in the ranking.

"We are seeing a fundamental change in many companies' environmental policies and products," she said. "We have heard from these companies that they see the list as a challenge and they are asking us what they can do to earn extra points."

Alhajj said that following initial reservations, the consistency and transparency of Greenpeace's ranking system had won over many of the companies in the industry. "We have been very clear on what they need to do and have been careful not to compare apples with oranges," she said. "The industry has recognised it as fair and transparent, and they know that if they act, that will be recognised."

Nokia's top spot was secured as the result of what Alhajj described as a " very progressive environmental policy", which has seen the company eliminate harmful PVCs and BFRs from some of its products and set a clear timeline for removing all potentially harmful components from across its portfolio.

"They also have a good energy policy, a commitment to go carbon neutral, phone chargers that are 70 per cent more efficient than is required under the Energy Star standard, and chargers that switch off when the phone is fully charged," added Alhajj. "There still needs to be some work done on the concept of selling a new charger with every phone, which is hardly resource efficient for the planet, but overall the company is moving in the right direction."

Greenpeace also singled out Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Samsung for bringing further improvements to their environmental policies, while Apple was hailed as a major success story after last week delivering on Steve Jobs' promise to produce PVC and BFR-free products with the launch of its latest line of iPods.

"The progress made by these companies gives you hope that the electronics industry can deliver real change," said Alhajj. "A few years ago they would tell us that you could not develop products without these chemicals, and we found that a political decision was needed. These companies have some of the biggest R &D departments in the world and once they decide to cut out dangerous chemicals, they have the ability to do so."

However, not all firms have made that political decision yet, according to Alhajj – a fact proven by Nintendo and Microsoft's position at the foot of Greenpeace's table.

She said that despite the recent release of some environmental information on its web site, Nintendo still had no publicly available environmental policy, while both Nintendo and Microsoft offered no take-back schemes for their games consoles.

"The games console manufacturers have said their products have a longer life span than laptops and mobiles," she said. "But they are thrown out eventually and we have found examples of these machines being disposed of in illegal scrap yards in the developing world."