GoodGuide in the News
7/13/2011
The Trouble With Green Product Ratings
But how are consumers supposed to know which products may be better for the planet? GoodGuide is trying to assist them by rating over 100,000 consumer products.
5/16/2011
GoodGuide Rates Products On Ingredients' Safety
GoodGuide's rising popularity - last month it saw 780,000 hits and has grown at a clip of about 10% per month - comes as consumers are becoming savvier and more selective about the products they purchase. With recent scandals such as lead found in toys and concerns about cell phone radiation and dangerous plastics, more and more people have become wary about the products they use and consume.
USA Today 5/13/2011
GoodGuide App Helps Navigate Green Products
When University of Berkeley-California professor Dara O'Rourke started GoodGuide, a website for seeking out green products, the iPhone hadn't been invented yet.
2/17/2011
GoodGuide Rates Most Virtuous Cell Phones
Whether they consider it bling or just a tool, people typically buy phones based on features and carrier plans. But if you're looking to add benign environmental and social impact to your feature wish list, GoodGuide has got the data.
The Boston Globe 4/20/2010
GoodGuide uses a scale of 1-10, 10 being excellent, 1 being "pretty poor," according to founder Dara O'Rourke Here are the top performers for three common household products - cereal, laundry detergent, and shampoo
The Boston Globe 4/20/2010
Goleman cites the website GoodGuide.com, for example, which aggregates some 200 databases and scores products based on their ecological and health impacts.
USA Today 4/20/2010
Celebrate 40th Earth Day with 50 green iPhone apps
Simply scan the product's barcode to view detailed ratings for the health, environment and social responsibility of more than 65,000 products and companies.
Fast Company 2/17/2010
Most Innovative Companies of 2010
Horizon Organic Milk has a worse environmental track record than Nesquik Strawberry Milk? Nature's Gate Baby Soothing Shampoo is more toxic than Suave for Kids 2 in 1 Shampoo? These and other shocking facts about the products around us -- from household cleaners to toys to food -- are being drilled into consumers thanks to GoodGuide, a startup founded by Dara O'Rourke.
Grist 11/28/2009
GoodGuide Scanner Makes Healthy Food Shopping Point and Click
Thanks to the app's new built in barcode scanner, GoodGuide has jumped to the home screen. Click on "scan," point the iPhone at, say, a bottle of organic chocolate sauce, and the app uses the iPhone's camera to read the barcode and deliver instant feedback on the product's "health performance," "environmental performance" as well its its maker's "social performance".
Inhabitat 11/25/2009
GoodGuide's New iPhone App Scans for Green Products
Simply by scanning the barcode with an iPhone, consumers can find out the nitty-gritty details of their favorite personal care, household chemical, toy and food products. Wondering whether that household cleaner you\u2019re eyeing is toxic? Just scan it! Shoppers even help pick the products to be rated next based on which ones they scan most frequently.
Fast Company 11/19/2009
GoodGuide iPhone App Scans Bar Codes for Environmental and Health Ratings
The process is simple. You just hit the scan tab on the app, point the phone at a product's barcode, and voila, instant product ratings on baby shampoo, yogurt, and everything in between. So even the laziest among us have no excuse to slack on social responsibility. And did I mention that the app is free?
Treehugger 11/19/2009
GoodGuide's Newest iPhone App Lets You Scan Barcodes In Stores And Get the Scoop on Products
What's great about the app beyond being able to select the best items, is users can also be part of determining what products are added to the rapidly growing database. If not already in the database, the products scanned most frequently will be prioritized for receiving ratings from GoodGuide.
CNET News 11/18/2009
iPhone App Scans Barcodes for Health, Enviro Ratings
Just in time for the crazed holiday shopping season, San Francisco-based GoodGuide releases the first iPhone app that lets you scan bar codes for what the guide calls "impartial" health, environmental, and social responsibility ratings of not only the products you are scanning but their companies, too.
Venture Beat 11/18/2009
GoodGuide Lets You Scan Barcodes to Find the Most Ethical Products
GoodGuide, one of my favorite applications for the iPhone, just got a cool new feature — barcode scanning. Users could already consult the app for data on whether a product was healthy, environmentally-friendly, and socially-responsible, but now you don't have to type in a search. Just scan the barcode, and the app brings up the relevant information.
Sierra Club 11/18/2009
Is it Green? Scan its Barcode to Find Out
Do you have trouble trying to find the most eco-friendly product in the store? Is it difficult to tell whether companies are greenwashing? Now GoodGuide has put responsible shopping just a few clicks away. The first iPhone application that scans bar codes to provide ratings on healthy, green, and socially responsible products is here. The app, which is available for free from Apple's iTunes App...
Progressive Grocer 11/18/2009
iPhone App Delivers Environment and Social Responsibility Product Ratings
n addition, by using the new version of GoodGuide\u2019s iPhone application, consumers can help select products to be rated next. GoodGuide will aggregate information about which products are scanned most frequently and use that information to prioritize the products that are rated by the applications.
Advertising Age 9/28/2009
GoodGuide Puts Brands' Ethical Claims to the Test
The hype and puffery of 21st-century ethical marketing may finally have met their match: a small band of venture-funded academics who have set out to systematically rate thousands of consumer products and their manufacturers on how good they really are.
Christian Science Monitor 8/30/2009
People making a difference: Dara O'Rourke
Dara O'Rourke wants to change the way we shop. He already is spurring a growing number of cautious consumers to think twice about what they buy — from soap to soup, detergent to deodorant. Mr. O'Rourke is cofounder of a website and iPhone app called GoodGuide, a sort of CliffsNotes to the confounding and complex world of ingredients typically — but not always — found listed on...
Ideal Bite 8/24/2009
Get greenness ratings for over 70,000 products - even offers nutritional info and ingredients lists
PC Magazine 7/27/2009
GoodGuide named in the Top 100 Web Sites for 2009 list
If you're looking for a site to help you buy disposable Styrofoam beer cozies and as many products containing high-fructose corn syrup as possible, GoodGuide is not what you're looking for. What it is good for, though, is finding ratings and deals on a variety of safe, healthy, and green products.
Newsweek 7/21/2009
How Our Purchases Affect The Environment
You don't need to wait for this sustainability index, which may take several years to develop, because there is a wonderful Web site called GoodGuide.com, which already does this. It's a downloadable app on an iPhone, and it rates products already on just these dimensions and instantly compares them to competitor products, summarizes their impacts in a single score on a 10-point scale, and lets...
Grist 7/5/2009
Grist's guide to green iPhone apps
Wondering what brand of toothpaste is the most eco-friendly? There's an app for that. Use this app to find out what's in 75,000 common household products. No iPhone? Check out goodguide.com.
Mother Nature Network 6/18/2009
Green business guide on your iPhone
GoodGuide allows you to get past good marketing and look at the nitty gritty eco-details on tens of thousands of products.
Seacoastonline 6/15/2009
Site rates how green a product really is
Goodguide.com has just a mind-boggling amount of information crammed into the Web site. It analyses data on 70,000-and-counting food, household and personal care products for their health, environmental and social performances.
New York Times 6/14/2009
On Web and iPhone, a Tool to Aid Careful Shopping
These days, every skin lotion and dish detergent on store shelves gloats about how green it is. How do shoppers know which are good for them and good for the earth?
Reuters 6/9/2009
Where Should the Feds Draw the Line on Green Marketing Claims?
UC Berkeley professor Dara O'Rourke, founder of the product rating web site GoodGuide ... thinks there's a need for the federal government to take action beyond the FTC, and he called for Congress to "strengthen and expand disclosure rules that undergird product claims."
New York Times 5/21/2009
Apply These Product Ratings Generously
We're not trying to tell you how to live your life or what social issue we think you should live by. We want you to make choices that better match your values or your concerns, so you can personalize the information using several filters.
GreenDaily 5/20/2009
GoodGuide Reads Ingredient Lists So You Don't Have To
Dara was inspired to make it easier for parents, and all of us, to figure out what's in the stuff we put on our bodies and sort out all the pretty marketing claims of "green" products. The result is GoodGuide, a one stop site for you find out how safe and eco-friendly a product really is.
CNET WebWare 5/19/2009
Webware 100 Editors' Choice: GoodGuide (Best Newcomer)
We created the Editors' Choice awards for products like this: Small and relatively unknown products that demonstrate real leadership
Bill Moyers Journal 5/15/2009
Bill Moyers Interviews Daniel Goleman
Daniel Goleman explains to Bill Moyers how better educated consumers can help build a sustainable economy.
KQED Radio 5/13/2009
Daniel Goleman on Forum with Michael Krasny
If you knew the hidden environmental, social and biological consequences of the products in your shopping bag, would you still buy them?
HealthNews 5/3/2009
Health Quotient for What You Put Into Your Mouth
The diligent staff at Good Guides analyzes and evaluates products based on potentially hazardous ingredients (genetically modified ingredients come to mind), environmental impact (including shipping/transportation), and social, labor and political practices of the manufacturer.
ABC 7 News 4/29/2009
Look What We Found: TheFind and GoodGuide
Should you get the locally grown zucchini or the organically farmed summer quash? The bamboo towel from Asia or the organic cotton bath sheet from Texas? Organic face cream or natural? Disposable or reusable? Plastic or stainless? Is it green, sustainable, FSC and Fair Trade?
Mamaista 4/26/2009
If you're like most moms, you have the occassional freak-out about the true meaning of "organic," "all natural" and "non-toxic" labels, but without a PhD, making sense of it all can be an exercise in frustration. Enter GoodGuide.com
Treehugger 4/22/2009
Green Eyes On: Buying for Earth Day
To find out how your dinner stacks up, visit the Good Guide's website and search food products that are vegan, low in sugar, low in sodium, have a low environmental impact, are organic and so on. In other words, you can choose your foods not just because your belly says "yummm," but because the planet approves as well.
Wired 4/22/2009
To Save the Earth, Start With Data
"[We want] to move people from being consumers of products to co-producers of supply chains," GoodGuide CEO and Berkeley professor, Dara O'Rourke told Wired.com at the website's launch. "This is where we move from individual action, solving an individual problem, to a collective action."
wowOwow 4/22/2009
I went shopping ... again today, but this time with complete confidence that the toy I was buying was the safest anywhere: I consulted GoodGuide.com, a brand new shopping app that downloads into an iPhone and rates tens of thousands of products on their safety, as well as their social and environmental impacts.
Newsweek 4/18/2009
Now we can trace the real environmental impact of the stuff we buy. How to raise your own eco-IQ.
U.S. News and World Report 4/14/2009
3 Easy Ways to Green Your Beauty Routine for Earth Day
How to green a beauty routine? Here are some suggestions. Products by Tom's of Maine and Burt's Bees get high rankings in the GoodGuide.
New York Times 4/7/2009
iPhone App of the Week: GoodGuide
Sorting through labels that are at best confusing, misleading or at worst, inaccurate, makes it tough to know what to buy. Fortunately, GoodGuide has done a lot of the work for you.
O Magazine 3/23/2009
GoodGuide integrates data from hundreds of complex databases and summarizes the bottom line in the time it takes to exhale.
Time Magazine 3/12/2009
10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now (download)
Start-ups like the website Good Guide are sifting through rivers of data for ordinary consumers, providing easy-to-understand ratings you can use to instantly gauge the full environmental and health impact of that T shirt. Even better, they'll get the information to you when you need it
NewScientist 2/28/2009
Website to Dish the Dirt on Foods
Is it best to buy local produce grown in a greenhouse or an imported alternative? Shoppers will soon have a powerful tool to help answer such conundrums: www.goodguide.com.
2/28/2009
Website to Dish the Dirt on Foods
Is it best to buy local produce grown in a greenhouse or an imported alternative? Shoppers will soon have a powerful tool to help answer such conundrums: www.goodguide.com.
San Francisco Chronicle 2/25/2009
So how do you navigate the drug store? Consult groups that identify good and bad cosmetics. You can even text GoodGuide from the store and they'll respond with safe products.
New York Magazine 1/11/2009
You'll Have Your Very Own Virtue Scanner
For those worried about unwittingly buying sneakers made by a team of 7-year-old Malaysian seamstresses, Berkeley professor Dara O'Rourke has launched GoodGuide.com.
TechCrunch Crunchies 2008 1/10/2009
Congratulations to the Crunchies Winners
GoodGuide wins Startup Most Likely to Make the World a Better Place.
Crosscurrents from KALW 12/15/2008
As you go shopping this holiday season you may be paying more attention than usual to the price tags. But this year it's "bargain hunter beware." It's just about impossible to tell what's in the Christmas presents we buy, but a San Francisco company, GoodGuide is trying to change that. KALW's Nathanael Johnson went shopping with Dara O'Rourke, the CEO of GoodGuide and has this story.
SF Chronicle: The Thin Green Line 12/12/2008
You won't be doing the children or pregnant women on your list any favors if you give them gifts containing BPA or pthalates. Toys made from "jelly rubber" contain pthalates unless they say otherwise. GoodGuide has rankings of toys and other common gifts here
KGO Newstalk 810 12/12/2008
Cool New Website: GoodGuide.com
GoodGuide combines HealthyToys.org's chemical testing results with additional health data, such as PVC and phthalate-free products, plus country of origin, and social and environmental performance scores for popular toy companies. Shoppers can access all of this information by downloading GoodGuide's free iPhone application or through text messaging...
Healthy Child Healthy World 12/11/2008
GoodGuide's Holiday Guide to Safe Toys
A parent's job has always been difficult. But this holiday season it seems you need a team of elves with PhDs to find out where the toys you're buying came from and what chemicals might be lurking inside them.
Ebay Ink 12/11/2008
Another resource to help with Consumer Safety: GoodGuide.com Beta
It's new and it's in Beta but the GoodGuide looks like another resource worth taking advantage of.
East Bay Express 12/10/2008
"Industry spends billions of dollars in this space figuring how to get you to buy their product. You are highly marketed. All we are trying to do is cut a little hole through that wall of marketing money. Here, in your hand, you can have independent information, a personal scientist in your pocket to help you live your own values in the marketplace," said Founder and CEO Dara O'Rourke.
Righteous (re)Style 11/19/2008
Throw Out Your Conditioner Now!
The good part about the GoodGuide is that it actually provides a list of alternatives. And I am able to buy them immediately from Amazon.com with one click! Maybe I do, finally, need to bid adieu to my favorite The good part about the GoodGuide is that it actually provides a list of alternatives. And I am able to buy them immediately from Amazon.com with one click! Maybe I do, finally, need to ...
Yahoo! Green 11/16/2008
GoodGuide's Team of Scientists Does the Hard Work For You
Have all the headlines about toxic chemicals in toys made you confused about which products to buy your child? You're not alone. Even the experts are stumped when it comes to finding safe toys for their kids....Luckily there are some new tools for consumers who want to make informed choices. It's a good thing, too, because about one third of the 1,500 toys tested by the Ecology Center contained...
Holidash 11/16/2008
Guitless Green Pampering Products for Your Beau
A new website that may or may not have had me and other panic-prone shoppers in mind, can now tell socially conscious shoppers to put down that Bulgari aftershave (which was rated "terrible"!) and suggest the J.P. Durga aftershave (rated "excellent"!) instead. GoodGuide rates products based on how health friendly, environmentally friendly, and socially friendly they are. Those who employ undera...
Treehugger 11/7/2008
GoodGuide Proves Green is Priority with Top Prize at Web 2.0 Summit
Six companies were highlighted at this week's Web 2.0 Summit, each of which earned a chance to show off their stuff in front of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and leaders in the tech industry. But it was the audience that prioritized and chose the greener GoodGuide as number one.
Plenty Magazine 11/7/2008
Attention, Shoppers: 'Goodness' Database Goes Mobile
It's time to load up on specialized [mobile] applications. The cleanest and greenest of the mobile bunch is GoodGuide, a database that ranks products by their environmental merits — or, more likely, their inadequacies. It just became available as an iPhone application through Apple's App Store, which is likely to increase its reach and user base quite dramatically.
Advertising Age 10/24/2008
Unilever for Obama; P&G For McCain
In case you needed any other proof of the rivalry, it turns out Procter & Gamble Co. (and its employees through their political action committee) overwhelmingly contribute to Republicans. Unilever doesn't have a PAC, but its employees overwhelmingly contribute to Democrats.
Radio New Zealand 10/11/2008
'This Way Up' interview with Dara O'Rourke
Shoppers get bombarded with information about the products sitting on the shelves. We get hit before we go shopping in the form of ads and then again once we're in store with packaging and special offers urging us to buy. But increasingly consumers want to know the full story behind the stuff they buy....what's in it...where it's made...how it's produced and is it environmentally friendly?
ABC News 7 9/22/2008
Goodguide Helps Knowledge of Products
The internet is filled with tons information for consumers who want to know what's in the products they buy — if you have hours to surf from site to site. But, what if there was one site that did all the research for you? Now, in a non-descript San Francisco office building — there is.
Sierra Club Radio 9/20/2008
Sierra Club Radio interviews Dara O'Rourke from GoodGuide.com, a new online resource that shows the health and environmental safety of thousands of household products.
BusinessWeek 9/17/2008
How the Web Can Help You Fight Greenwashing
So where can one find some green peace of mind? The Web, of course. A growing number of Web sites have started to emerge to help consumers sort through the (green) BS.
Lifehacker 9/12/2008
GoodGuide Evaluates Environmental Impact of Your Purchases
But how is the average consumer supposed to know that XYZ product is made in a sweatshop where workers have no protective gear or that ABC fragrance is made with a chemical banned in several countries? GoodGuide is a web-based database of products that offers ratings for products based on the company's history of social and environmental behavior, the impact of the creation of the particular it...
ABC News 7 9/12/2008
Ever want to know what type of environmental impact the products you buy make? GoodGuide is a new Web site that ranks products and the companies that make them on their health, environmental and social performance. The site currently offers detailed information on more than 60,000 household and personal care products -- from baby shampoos to bathroom cleaners. It will add similar information fo...
CNET 9/12/2008
Best of shows: Top 10 from DemoFall, TechCrunch50
Chances for success: Very good. Looks addictive and useful. Great business model. (Site has buying links to products.) Why we like it: Has great product data presented in a compelling and simple interface. And the timing is right; people care about this information.
PC Magazine 9/11/2008
TechCrunch50: A Guide for Truly Good Products
Unveiled on the third and last day of TechCrunch50 and a clear judge favorite, the result was GoodGuide, a site with a mission very similar to that of OpenTrace.com. GoodGuide relies less on user input, getting its data from public scientific data and has in-house toxicologists and chemists on staff to interpret the not-for-laymen data. It displays a score from 1 to 10 for each product based on...
NPR Marketplace 9/11/2008
New Site Rates Products for Safety etc
GoodGuide.com gives consumers a fast and easy way to find product ratings in numerous categories from reliable sources like government and academic databases. Rachel Dornhelm tries it out.
Wired.com Science 9/10/2008
Startup Fights Greenwashing With Data Sent to Your Phone
Ever since companies across America, from Exxon to Wal-Mart, started "going green," scientists, environmentalists and skeptics have all been wondering: What does green mean, anyway? Today, a startup came out of stealth mode claiming that they'll put hard numbers to companies' health and environmental claims about their wares.
Spun out of Berkeley's Sustainability...
Washington Post 9/10/2008
GoodGuide Shines Light On The "Goodness" Of Consumer Products
Product transparency was a popular theme in the twelfth and last session of TechCrunch50, Research and Recommendations, with two companies in particular helping consumers make better purchasing decisions. The first, GoodGuide, was met with unanimous acclaim from the expert panel for its efforts to inform consumers of the social, environmental and health "goodness" of personal care products and ...
Earth2Tech 9/10/2008
GoodGuide Launches to Shine a Light on Products
From a purely consumer/user perspective, the team has developed a pretty sticky site. In addition to the easy-to-read ratings, it also has the latest product news (like recalls) and a discussion forum. We can tell you that as GoodGuide adds more and more products to its rankings database, we'll be spending more and more time using it.
The Industry Standard 9/10/2008
GoodGuide helps you find healthy, sustainable, ethical products
I haven't been at every TechCrunch50 session, but this is my favorite of the companies I've seen. The judges were unanimous in their support too. They pointed out that the idea may sound basic at first, but compiling and weighing this data actually requires a lot of work and expertise.
Contact Info
For press and media questions, please contact media@goodguide.com
We're located at 98 Battery Street in downtown San Francisco. Google Map
Media Resources
Screenshots from GoodGuide.com
- GoodGuide Logo
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Awards
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Fast Company
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Crunchies 2008 -
Web2.0 Conference
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TechCrunch50 Conference
