Nokia has retained the top spot in Greenpeace’s latest ranking of 17 consumer electronics companies over their environmental practices, while Philips and Apple made strides up the list.

Philips leaped to 4th place from 11th and Apple moved up to 10th place from 14th — best among the top 5 PC makers — in Greenpeace’s latest “Guide to Greener Electronics” report. Companies are ranked based on a number of criteria related to chemicals, e-waste and energy, and Greenpeace uses the report to help pressure companies to change.

Samsung moved up to second place from fourth, while Sony Ericcson dropped a spot to third. Sony rounded out the top five.

Greenpeace said it penalized Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell for “backtracking” on their commitment to eliminate toxic vinyl plastic (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs) by the end of 2009. The environmental group said only Apple and Acer are sticking by pledges to phase out the substances.

Todd Tod Arbogast, director of sustainable business at Dell, said Dell scores well on other portions of the Greenpeace scorecard but that doing away with PVCs and BVRs is challenging.

“Dell continues to commit to eliminating those materials, however as many in our industyr have also acknowledged, its challening to find viable, scaleable substitutes.”

Acer ranked 11th on the overall list, with Dell 13th, Lenovo 14th and HP 16th.

“For decades HP has been a leader in environmental responsibility and has adopted practices in product development, operations and supply chain that are transparent and help to reduce its environmental impact,” HP said in an e-mail statement. “The Greenpeace report confirms that the electronics industry as a whole continues to make progress bringing more environmentally friendly products to market.”

Greenpeace said many consumer electronics companies have shown improvement in the area of climate change. Samsung and Philips have publicly demonstrated support for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while Dell, Nokia, HP and Philips have committed to “substantial” cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from their operations.

Several exhibitors took up the “green” theme at CES 2009 as the “Pre” party continued. Any chance Dell had to upstage Palm disappeared in a cloud of secrecy with the “Adamo” laptop it briefly presented, but gave no details about.

Fuji said its EnviroMAX alkaline batteries were made of more than 90 percent recycled materials, had no mercury, cadmium and were PVC free.

Singapore-based Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies said their “HydroPack” water-activated and portable power system HydroPak could provide 4 to 5 hours of 50 watt emergency power without pollution or noise.

Design conscious Areaware showed off a retro and playful radio called “Magno”, that it said was made in Indonesia with sustainable harvest timber.

And Greenpeace held a press conference praising gadgets by Lenovo, Sharp, Samsung, Nokia and Toshiba in its 2008 Green Electronics Survey.

Intel rolled out the next generation of its netbooks aimed at the education sector and emerging markets. The third generation Classmate PC netbook is actually a netbook tablet, adding a touch screen and powered by Intel’s Atom processor.

Check out this slideshow for a look at some of the shiny new toys in various shades of green and grey featured at CES 2009.

(Photos: Fuji’s EnviroMAX batteries, HydroPack system by Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies)