A new website hopes to be the ultimate consumer handbook for all info on a product and its company’s policies. GoodGuide.com is mastering the personal care domain, but DigitalJournal.com has learned it will soon set its site on food and electronics.
Digital Journal — I’ve been using Pantene Pro-V shampoo for years, so I’ve always been curious about its environmental and health effects. And since we all vote with our dollars, what does my purchase of Pantene’s shampoo say? Am I giving my money to a company with strong labour rights records? Am I suffering from any toxic side effects?
Now I can find out all this information thanks to a fascinating website focusing on product transparency. GoodGuide.com compiles data on more than 63,000 consumer products, scoring items between 1 and 10 on categories such as Health, Environment and Social Performance. Even more interesting is how the website breaks down into sub-categories, allowing each product profile page to list scores on climate change, water use, philanthropy, cancer effects, customer satisfaction, and so on.
For Pantene Pro-V Clarifying Shampoo, I found out GoodGuide.com scores the product 9.7 on Health Performance (it’s safe), 6.2 on Social Performance (its labour practices could be improved) and 5.1 on Environmental Performance (Al Gore wouldn’t go near it). In Environment, I can see it scored a 1.6 on Water Use Targets, which looks at how companies “set targets to stabilize its water use.” Its energy consumption was listed as “terrible” and it seems it violated the Clean Air Act several times. For shame, Procter and Gamble.
So far, GoodGuide.com, based in San Francisco, is the consumer handbook for personal care and medicinal products, specializing in oral and hair care items. Want to find out the top-rated toothpastes? GoodGuide.com lists the top item as Tom’s of Maine Homeopathic Apricot. Interested to know why Perry Ellis deodorant rates dismally? Search for the item and find out its score in employee relations (1.6) and health and safety (5). Ouch.
The site only lists information on American products. It plans to expand its product scores to Canadian and overseas items in the future.
GoodGuide.com, which launched last week and notched a runner-up honour for the top prize at TechCrunch 50, is outfitted with a host of useful features: short paragraphs on what to look for in each category works as an informative intro; a free membership allows you to write reviews of products, add items to your shopping list or “avoid list”, and you can contact the company directly to offer your kudos or feedback; in a section under the tab “learn”, you can see recent recalls and safety alerts issued by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Also, a multiple-choice quiz on consumer products tests your knowledge on what’s crowding a store shelf near you.
With a Web 2.0 idea like GoodGuide, questions abound about how it collects all that comprehensive data not known to the general public. DigitalJournal.com spoke to GoodGuide CEO Dara O’Rourke about the market demand for health info on products, why user-generated comments are an after-thought, and how listing food items will be the next big challenge.
DigitalJournal.com: The scores for each product are thorough, but how does GoodGuide.com reach every score?
Dara O’Rourke: For each product category, we do scientific work to find out what matters in terms of each item’s lifecycle. It’s somewhat easy to get data on publicly traded companies, but with small private companies we have deals with research and investment firms to get info about a company’s policies and performance. The data providers give us evaluations and we convert that data to a score between 1 and 10. We go through the data to figure out what is relevant.
DigitalJournal.com: But the site doesn’t break down why a certain scores a certain way yet, right?
O’Rourke: We haven’t built a detailed user-friendly page yet, that’s correct. We just explain the criteria on which the company was evaluated. That’s the beginning. We want to drill down through the data to find out the “why” behind the scores, and that’s definitely going to roll out before November. Our team is working on this all day and night.
DigitalJournal.com: You have a lot of personal care products on GoodGuide, but what kind of expansion are you planning?
O’Rourke: Packaged food is next. We need ingredient-level data, so fresh food would be difficult. There is a lot people don’t know about the food supply chain that should be public. We want to fill in those data gaps. Also, we’ll be listing electronics in the future, because consumers might want to know what kind of toxic materials are inside their cellphones or laptops, and how each brand compares to another.
DigitalJournal.com: Will GoodGuide encourage user reviews of products? So far, I’ve only noticed many Amazon.com reviews the site has collected.
O’Rourke: There are lots of companies purely based on user-generated comments. In our beta test, we’ll see how far we go down that path but it’s not our main focus. But adding a user review could help consumers decide whether to trust a product even more. We can give you info about factors like environmental effects but user reviews can offer recommendations.
DigitalJournal.com: What’s the main challenge you face in making GoodGuide.com so popular it becomes the ultimate hub for product info?
O’Rourke: We need to move from our super users to mainstream shoppers. That involves a lot of hard work but we are confident shoppers will want this information. If enough people see this info, there is potential to shift market demand to more good stuff. Adding transparency to products can help shoppers make better choices on what they use every day.
