GoodGuide ... for ethical shopping
This site was discussed in a Bill Moyers interview with Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing The Hidden Impacts Of What We Buy Can Change Everything. Goleman claims that sites such as this provide 'radical transparency' to our purchase decisions. And his research suggests that ethical buying is NOT always more costly!
Increasingly, you want to know about the impacts of the products you buy. On your health. On the environment. On society. But unless you’ve got a Ph.D, it is almost impossible to find out the impacts of the products you buy. Until now…
GoodGuide provides the world's largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home.
With GoodGuide, you can:
. Find safe, healthy and green products that protect you and your family
. Search or browse over 70,000 food, toys, personal care, & household products to see what’s really beneath the label
. Use expert advice and recommendations on products to quickly learn the impacts of what you buy
. Find better products and make purchasing decisions based on what’s important to you
. Create a personalized favorites list with the products that are right for you and your family
GoodGuide gives you the best information available, wherever and whenever you need it most. We’ll help you find better products that represent your values, avoid products that are harmful to your health, the environment, or society – and enable you to take actions to help improve the world.
The Guardian (UK) / Suzanne Goldenberg / 21 June 2009
More than 98% of supposedly natural and environmentally friendly products on US supermarket shelves are making potentially false or misleading claims, Congress has been told. And 22% of products making green claims bear an environmental badge that has no inherent meaning, said Scot Case, of the environmental consulting firm TerraChoice.
The study of nearly 4,000 consumer products found "greenwashing" in nearly every product category – from a lack of verifiable information to outright lies.
Even the experts are confused. Case, whose firm runs its own Ecologo certification programme, admitted he had bought a refrigerator only to find it failed to meet its claims of energy efficiency.
"My refrigerator used twice as much energy as advertised," he told members of the House of Representatives committee on commerce, trade and consumer protection. The hearing amounted to a crash course into the perils of the new green marketplace for the committee. Congress is looking at how to guide consumers through a thicket of competing claims on so-called greenness.
One problem is proliferation – both of products claiming to be green and of certification programmes purporting to back up those claims.
The interest in products that do not poison water or air, create unnecessary waste or unduly add to the effects of climate change has defied class divisions and the economic recession. In its company surveys, Wal-Mart, the chain of low-cost megastores, found that 57% of its customers professed to be concerned about the environment.
There is a constantly expanding pool of products to choose from. About 33% of all new food products launched in 2008 claimed to be "natural", Dara O'Rourke, a professor in environmental policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of the GoodGuide, told the recent hearing. But with around 300 competing environmental certification programmes, shoppers are bombarded by irrelevant or deceptive labels touting the green, natural, eco-friendly, recyclable and non-toxic properties of goods.
It is virtually impossible to sort through the claims, said Urvashi Rangan, of the Consumers Union. "We've got to get rid of the green noise," she said. "Vague and misleading terms should not be allowed."
[ FULL ARTICLE HERE ]