Apple, Facebook, and Google are the greenest tech giants — but they still need to do a lot more

“It’s not easy being green” is a tired cliché, but it’s still particularly true if you are a giant technology company. Even Apple, Facebook, and Google — the best of the bunch, according to a new report from Greenpeace — will have to put in serious additional effort to fully shift to clean energy, especially in terms of lobbying at the state and local level. And the industry laggards, which include Amazon and eBay, have that much further to go.

Here’s how Greenpeace categorizes the tech giants today:

Click image to embiggen.Greenpeace

Energy efficiency in traditional appliances keeps improving, but our demand for energy is boosted by new technologies. In particular, companies that manufacture mobile devices and provide services like email, social networking, cloud storage, and streaming video have to contend with constantly escalating demand for data storage.

At the same time, being eco-friendly is important to many of…