GoodGuide Reads Ingredient Lists So You Don't Have To
(Photo by GoodGuide)
You used to be able to walk down the aisle of a natural foods store, and tell just by looking at the packaging which products didn't have any bad chemicals or dangerous ingredients in them. All natural products were:
- wrapped in ugly brown paper packaging
- sold in bulk out of grimy vats
- tied up with hemp string
- utterly devoid of luxury and prettiness
But then the ugly eco-duckling of natural products was captured by the girls in marketing and given a glamorous make-over. Today there are hundreds of organic, natural, and green products that you want to buy just for the pretty ribbon on the box. Here's the problem: Now that it's cool to be natural, and you're allowed to have pretty packaging, it's almost impossible to tell which products are healthy and safe, and which ones are just really, really well packaged.
It was the safety mystery that prompted Professor Dara O'Rourke to check out the sunscreen he was putting on his five year old daughter Minju. To his horror, it contained a toxic ingredient. But he was only able to figure that out because he was a researcher at University of California-Berkeley and had access to detailed information.
Dara was inspired to make it easier for parents, and all of us, to figure out what's in the stuff we put on our bodies and sort out all the pretty marketing claims of "green" products. The result is GoodGuide, a one stop site for you find out how safe and eco-friendly a product really is.
Some serious brain power went into setting up this site -- the team includes scientists, consumer researchers, technologists and industry professionals coming from Google, Amazon, eBay, PayPal, Intuit, MIT and the University of California. They're geniuses at reading the labels -- and analyzing that list of ingredients -- so you don't have to be!
The GoodGuide site is totally easy to use, and has a surprising amount of information. There are about 70,000 products in the system, with more being added. In addition to beauty products, you can search for information on food, toys, and household products, like cleansers. Everything has a rating, from 1-10, which takes into account the ingredients in the product, the company's environmental practices and how it compares to similar products.
The functionality also extends to purchasing. You can see the average price, find a local place to buy it, or order it online from amazon or thefind.com. And members can write reviews of the products, providing another whole dimension of information.
You can still try to judge a product by it's packaging, but with GoodGuide, now you don't need to!
Comments [0]
Tips for a Green Thanksgiving
10 Tips for Making Your Home More Energy Efficient
Green Gift Ideas: Beauty Gift Sets
