You could imagine that if Consumer Reports and LEED got together and had a baby; it might look something like GoodGuide. The Guide currently has close to 80,000 products evaluated in categories like personal care, food, household chemicals, paper products, and toys.
So, the idea is, as you are walking down the aisle of your favorite store, trying to exercise your purchasing power in the most responsible fashion, you stop in front of the dishwasher detergent to mull over your choices. You pick up Cascade, your usual brand and scan the barcode with your iPhone. You find that it gets a respectable rating of 7.1 out of ten. A perfect 10 for health (no issues), but a more average 5.5 for environment and a 5.9 for society. Curious, you drill down and see that it gets dinged on biodiversity with a meager 1.9 for habitat conservation. Thirty-five people recommend it, nine say to avoid it. A little disappointed, you set the box back down. It had always done a good job getting the dishes clean, but you like animals, so you look around to see what else there is. You pick up a bottle of Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwasher Gel and scan its barcode. It gets an 8.2, including an 8.4 for environment and 7.6 for biodiversity. A whopping 293 people recommend it and only 3 said to avoid it. Even though it costs a little more, and it only got an 8.0 for health, you decide to give it a try.
GoodGuide Keeps Growing: A Cool Tool to Help Consumers Change the World [Triple Pundit]