GoodGuide.com
June is International Pagan Bloggers Month, so let me say a bit about GoodGuide.com which offers consumers an opportunity to put their money where their values are.
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 in the brainchild of Dara O’Rourke, a Professor at the University of California-Berkeley. One day a few summers ago, he was putting sunscreen on his five-year old daughter Minju, when he wondered, “What’s in this stuff?” He researched the ingredients and discovered that her sunscreen contained a toxic ingredient. He wanted other parents to know what he had found–and he wanted to cut through the confusing claims that make it hard for consumers to make sensible buying decisions.
So he brought together both academic and technology experts to create a world-class team of scientists, consumer researchers, technologists and industry professionals. From Google, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, and Intuit, to MIT and the University of California, we’ve developed a “For Benefit” startup at the forefront of integrating science and technology, working to fill a huge information gap in the marketplace.
GoodGuide makes it easy to look up products I use regularly. And, surprisingly, my bargain priced Suave Shampoo scores higher than many high priced salon products. My Suave Ocean Breeze has an overall rating of 8.7 with a 9.3 on Health Performance, an 8.6 on Environmental Performance, and an 8.1 on Social Performance. In comparison Redkin Blonde Glam Shampoo has an overall rating of 7.7. It does score a perfect 10.0 on Health Performance but a 7.2 on Environmental Performance, and a 6.0 on Social Performance. And it costs about 10 times what I pay for my Suave.
GoodGuide is still in Beta development. A fully functional database may allow you to scan the bar code of a product right on the supermarket shelf and get a product rating.
I gotta shop…with GoodGuide I can choose products that treat the Earth gently and support companies that give back to the environment and look after their employees. –Because we are all caught up in a web of interconnections.
