Ratings and Methodology
GoodGuide is building a comprehensive source of information on the environmental, social, and health performance of products and companies. The GoodGuide team works with a network of leading academic institutions, government data sources, non-governmental organizations, and private research firms to bring world-class information to consumers.
GoodGuide's scientists have collected data from around the world on chemical ingredients, products, brands, factories, companies, industrial sectors, and even countries. We gather the highest quality data available and convert this information into ratings that can be used by non-scientists to easily evaluate products and companies.
In the future, GoodGuide will have tools to let consumers screen this data through their own personal preferences, allowing them to "filter" and search for products and companies that match their specific values.
The Data
GoodGuide aggregates and analyzes data on both product and company performance. We employ a range of scientific methods – health hazard assessment, environmental impact assessment, and social impact assessment – to identify major impacts to human health, the environment, and society. Each of these categories is then further analyzed within specific issue areas, such as climate change policies, labor concerns, and product toxicity. Currently, GoodGuide's database has over 600 base criteria by which we evaluate products and companies.
As an example, for health performance, GoodGuide's system takes into account both the impacts of a company's operations on its workers and local communities, and the impacts of using a specific product on your health. Our team has gathered data on important health hazards such as cancer risks, reproductive health hazards, mutagenicity, endocrine disruption, respiratory hazards, and skin and eye irritation. Our research currently uses a simplified health hazard assessment process that allows us to rate thousands of products along standard criteria. It should be noted that while these ratings are not risk assessments of products or chemicals, they do highlight potential hazards associated with the use of these products.
For environmental performance, GoodGuide is aggregating data on the life-cycle impacts of products, from manufacturing to transportation to use to final disposal. For companies, impact categories include environmental emissions (and their impacts on air, water, land, and climate), natural resource impacts, environmental management programs, and proactive environmental initiatives. GoodGuide uses these categories to generate overall environmental performance ratings for companies.
For social issues, GoodGuide aggregates data on the social impacts companies have on their employees – compensation, labor and human rights practices, diversity policies, and working conditions – as well as on consumers, communities, and even animals. The social scoring system also brings together information on corporate governance, disclosure policies, and overall practices.
Our Ratings
Different types of information flow into GoodGuide's system: absolute measures, relative measures, and binary measures. Absolute measures describe measurable activities of a company or product. For example, the pounds of toxic air emissions released per year, the CEO's salary, or the amount of money a company donated to charity. Relative measures are scores, such as a numerical grade of "6.5 out of 10" or a textual grade of "bad" to "excellent." Binary (or Yes/No) measures indicate whether a product or company does or does not have specific characteristics. For example, a product may or may not have earned an environmental certification, or a company may or may not test its products on animals.
These measures are then used to create GoodGuide's ratings. To calculate a single rating for a product or company, we convert all of the existing measures into a 0 to 10 score. In GoodGuide's system, a score of 10 is the best and a score of 0 is the worst. Products and companies are rated relative to the performance of similar products or companies in the same industry.
The initial ratings are based on a set of selected criteria from a broad pool of data available within the GoodGuide database. We think these criteria are some of the most representative and understandable. As this is the first time all of this data has ever been aggregated in the same place, we are currently working to assess the consistency and comparability of measures across our many data sources. We would love to hear your suggestions on the relative importance of these various measures of product and company performance.
GoodGuide recognizes that even the most quantitative assessment of environmental, health, or social issues requires value judgments about the relative importance of various issues. For example, rational people can disagree over the relative importance of animal testing in evaluating a product or company. We have used our best scientific judgment in building our current ratings, and in future versions we will flag issues where personal values and preferences are particularly relevant. We will then enable people to create personalized ratings based on their own concerns.
In order to facilitate your ability to assess the data, we will also be providing an assessment of data uncertainty, completeness, and quality. These assessments can be used to weight the existing data within the GoodGuide database.
In some cases data is unavailable for a company or a product. This may be because we have not yet identified a credible data source for a given issue or topic. It may also be that the data is not publicly available because companies have not disclosed critical information. One goal of this project is to work collaboratively with key stakeholders around the world, including government agencies, non-profit organizations, private research firms, and companies to promote the quantity and quality of disclosure of important data to the public.
