A U.K. company has developed a traffic-light scoring system to help consumers choose sustainably and ethically sourced products.
Inspired by Nutri-Scores for food products, the CEO of Brand Conscience, Carrie Lomas, set out to create a similar system that could be applied to clothes. But the company has since branched out, covering products from toys to regenerative farming.
The labels individually rate five elements: production processes, longevity, recyclability, manufacturing miles, and company kindness.
This allows consumers to judge overall sustainability and ethics at a glance, and then they can purchase based on what they deem most important.
Lomas explained in a recent interview: "We appreciate that what makes something bad in one category may make it good in another," she said. "... For instance, polyester isn't ranked highly for production processes due to its carbon footprint, but polyester extends longevity so that will be ranked higher."
An EU law that is expected to be enacted in 2026 (and implemented through 2030) will ensure that all producers must declare what is in their products, how and where they are made, and how they traveled to their destination.
The law has now been delayed by several years, but Brand Conscience expects its ranking to be widespread once it is in place.
"Most people don't understand references to kilograms of carbon, so it's just not useful as an indicator," Lomas said.
"It's so important to show relativity, which is why we started using the color codes. ... You've got to fit into the way consumers behave today — there is a need to design products better and help consumers make informed choices."
Currently, the Higg Index is used by many clothing brands to indicate their sustainability.
However, an independent review of the index found that the widely used material impact assessment was misleading when used in isolation.
Lomas argues that the index is flawed because it is "polyester positive," thereby ignoring the carbon footprint and impact of microplastics.
"We use 'first principles' in our rankings, meaning that if a material is fossil-fuel based, it can't be ranked higher than orange for production," she said.
Founded and bootstrapped in 2019, Brand Conscience received a government-funded grant to conduct in-depth primary and secondary research.
The initial intention was to provide a consumer-facing product for companies. But they have since dedicated equivalent effort to reviewing products for companies internally and, from there, offering solutions to improve.
The team regularly works with licensors to grade licensee products and has done so with a large toy manufacturer and supermarket chains.
"One of the tools we have developed allows designers to input their data into our AI system, which will then recommend incremental changes to the design," Lomas said, "which would improve its sustainability and ethics."
She added: "This will be increasingly useful in the near future when we expect consumers will be filtering e-commerce by sustainability and we will see growth of digital product passports."
Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Cool Picks
