A lot of people love shopping, but how many people consider how ethical their shopping habits are? Well, now you can easily discover what brands you love support, or unfortunately don’t support, good ethical practices. Good On You is a free app that allows you to look up your favorite brands and discover how they’re ranked based on their practices with people, the planet and animals. They’ve ranked over 2,000 brands but if they don’t have your favorite brand listed, you can request that they look into ranking them. If you find out your favorite brands are unethical, Good On You gives you alternative ethical brands that match your style and price range.
But how do they rate brands? According to their website, they rate brands based on a one (We Avoid) to five (Great) scale. Good On You uses certification schemes and other independent rating projects such as Fair Trade, OEKO-TEX and the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and over 50 other certification schemes, standards systems, and independent rating or assessment methods available for use by brands to rate brands. If the information needed to rate a category is not provided by these, then they look at the brands own specific, fact-based public statements to determine their ethicality. They also look into if brands are taking steps to improve their ethical practices. Suffice to say, Good On You does it’s research. There are three main categories they rate each brand’s ethicality on, people, planet, and animals. Let’s take a closer look at each category.
People. Good On You looks at how brands impact their workers across the supply chain. They research the brand’s policies and practices on child labor, forced labor, worker safety, workers right to join a union, and living wage payment. They also look at supplier relations and auditing practices.
Planet. Good On You looks at each brand’s resource use and disposal, energy use and carbon emissions, impacts on water, and chemical use and disposal.
Animals. Good On You looks at any use of fur, angora, down feather, shearling, karakul, exotic animal skin, and hair, or any wool use including ‘mulesing’ and whether and how the brand uses leather.
Personally, I’ve gotten a lot of use out of this app and it’s helped me to improve my shopping habits to make more ethical choices. If you care about making better shopping choices too, download Good On You now, and start feeling good about your shopping!