Greenbang’s 2010 Awards recognise the top innovations and sustainability projects from businesses working to create a low-carbon future, and cover everything from smart-grid technology to low-energy building design.

The 2010 Greenbang Award winners are:

Best corporate responsibility project:
SAP, for its SAP Project Ghana, which provides women in Ghana with the training and technology needed to operate competitive, market-based cooperatives in the international shea nut butter trade.

Best IT technology:
1E, for its NightWatchman automated software for desktop and server power management.

Top smart-grid technology:
Onzo, for its suite of energy management products and services to help both utilities and end-users improve energy efficiency.

Best data centre innovation:
TelecityGroup, for the innovative, efficiency-maximising design of its Condorcet data centre in Paris.

Most efficient transport programme:
Carbon Voyage, for its simple strategy to maximise the efficiency of existing modes of transport through taxi ride-sharing, web-based trip planning and reduction of empty taxis.

Best sustainable resource management programme:
Cawleys, for its multi-benefit initiative to reduce food and agricultural waste while reducing landfill emissions of greenhouse gases and generating clean energy via anaerobic digestion.

Best low-energy building:
L’Oreal, for its 100-per cent biomass-fueled beauty products plant in Libramont, Belgium.

Best cross-organisation sustainability effort:
Sony Ericsson, for its GreenHeart across-portfolio initiative to eliminate paper phone manuals, significantly reduce packaging, phase out hazardous substances in its products and recycle phones to recover valuable resources.

Top in-house sustainability effort:
Verizon, for instituting waste-reducing printing practices, greening its fleet with hybrid and compressed-natural-gas vehicles, re-engineering shipping processes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and trialing fuel-cell, geothermal and solar energy at its Garden City facility in New York.

“At a time when low-carbon, sustainable initiatives find themselves increasingly under pressure, it’s important to encourage and showcase some of the most forward-thinking businesses currently operating in the space today,” said Dan Ilett, Research Director of Greenbang Research.

“It was precisely because of this, that this year we decided to reward the very best initiatives that combine smart thinking, hard work, beautiful design and clever technology, in what has been a tough economic environment. As an advisory research business that works with some of the biggest brands in the world — key influencers in technology, sustainability, energy and climate change — we believe that by identifying and showcasing some of the very best initiatives, we can encourage innovation and set an important benchmark for the future.“