Be careful when using eco-rating guides
July 28, 2009 by Jennifer Chait
Filed under Green Living
There are plenty of places on the web to look for eco-rated products. Some sites are amazing while others are good with a few cons. Some make you go hmmm entirely like GoodGuide.
GoodGuide notes that they provide, “The world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home.”
At GoodGuide you can enter a product into a search form or browse by category. They rate products on safety, health, and eco-friendly aspects. In all, they currently list about 70,000 food, toys, personal care, & household products. You have to be extremely careful at this site though. They’re not totally eco-minded in my opinion. Examples include…
Fantastik All Purpose Cleaner With Bleach is rated as a 8.1 – with a stunning 9.0 in environmental performance. It actually rates higher than an actual eco-minded product there, Earth Friendly Products Window Kleener With Vinegar.
First of all Fantastik contains bleach AND S. C. Johnson & Son who makes this product is a company who continues to make other toxic cleaning products and non-reusable items like plastic baggies even though they’re trying to sell them as green – um there are better options. How many of us don’t know how bad bleach is? Few right? In case you forgot read: New Advertisements Pour Bleach On Children or Bleach Doesn’t Belong in our Homes.
I can’t, in any sort of wildest dreams, imagine what might make someone call this company green but GoodGuide does. S. C. Johnson & Son may use some alternative energy, they may recycle, but they also pollute the planet and humans with their products.
Kid’s shampoo…
GoodGuide rates Suave Berry Burst Kids 2 In 1 Shampoo an 8.2 although Suave is a company who has not signed the Compact for Safe Cosmetics and they test on animals. Plus Skin Deep rates this product as a 5, i.e more toxic than about 42% of other kid hair products.
Looking through the site I noticed tons of other toxic products with high eco-ratings. It’s like they’re allowing the companies to come in and write their own reviews.
In good news you can filter results to include or not products that are:
- Environmentally Friendly
- Fragrance Free
- Not Tested On Animals
However, as noted their take on eco-friendly may not be the same as yours. Their organic food guide is useful and contains actual information that’s on target and their food ratings are also good. However, if you’re looking for eco-friendly cleaners or body care products I’d seriously be careful when using the GoodGuide.
Later I’ll be back with some green guides that are more useful when it comes to choosing healthy, eco-friendly health and cleaning products.
[image via stock.xchng]
Thank you, thank you. I have been thinking about the Good Guide rankings for quite some time and just cannot figure them out. Thanks for pointing this out for others to see as well; I don’t trust any rankings from a company that gives such high marks to a product with bleach in it.
I’m emailing the company as soon as I get a free minute to ask them what’s up because I did a general search and I can’t find one negative review of them. All the big green sites plus major news outlets (like NYT) are loving them. I was so frustrated earlier after seeing all the stellar reviews that I had to take a break actually.