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"We have partnered with ClimateCounts.org to flow their information on the climate policies and practices of companies that produce the goods we consume."
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Conversations on Transparency
http://blog.goodguide.com/2009/6/3/conversations-on-transparency
By Dara O'Rourke, June 03, 2009
Over the last decade of conducting research on these issues, I have ended up mainly talking to a few other academics (and talking to myself on occasion;) about the sometimes arcane details of global supply chains.
However, since launching GoodGuide.com, we have realized we have created a platform of sorts for conversations with a wide range of stakeholders on these issues - and in particular - on debates about transparency in the marketplace.
We are now hearing directly from thousands of our users. In fact, we have been a bit overwhelmed by the richness of the feedback and input from our users. So we are now building better ways to receive ideas and to respond to them. The great news on this is that people really want to know more about the products they are using. We are learning a lot about the issues the public cares most about, what products they want us to rate next, and where our information is not clear enough.
We have also been having some very interesting conversations with academics, non-profit organizations, and leaders from industry. This has led to some new collaborations and partnerships to get better information out to the public. For instance, we just partnered with http://ClimateCounts.org to flow their information on the climate policies and practices of companies that produce the goods we consume.
We have also been having some interesting conversations with reporters. I was just interviewed for http://www.technation.com today, which should be aired on NPR stations around the US in the coming week. I also recently got to sit down with Daniel Goleman to talk about the science and rating systems behind GoodGuide. It is rare these days to ever get to talk in detail beyond soundbites in the media. So it was a real pleasure to dig into some of details of GoodGuide and broader movements for transparency in the marketplace. You can download our interview, called Ecological Awareness, and check out other great interviews between Daniel and Greg Norris and Michael Lerner.
What I think all of these conversations are showing is that we are at the beginning of a potentially very rich conversation between consumers, manufacturers, retailers, and other stakeholders in these supply chains. We would love to expand and facilitate this dialogue as we build GoodGuide.com. So please let us know how you think we can do a better job of supporting these conversations on transparency.
About Dr. Dara O'Rourke:
Dr. Dara O'Rourke is a professor in the Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley, and formerly a professor at MIT. He studies the environmental, social, and health impacts of global supply chains.
Connections:
Dara O'Rourke
CEO - GoodGuide.com
dara at goodguide.com
Associate Professor
Environmental justice, globalization, industrial ecology, labor
UC - Berkeley, CA
orourke at nature.berkeley.edu
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"Our ratings are completely independent from, and never influenced by, web links to shopping sites."
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Interview with GoodGuide.com CEO Dara O’Rourke by Willi Paul
Join Good Guide: http://www.goodguide.com/user/new
What gives you faith in the human race?
From our experience, almost no one wants unsustainable products. Parents don't want baby shampoo with carcinogens, or toys made by child labor, or laptops that hurt communities after they are disposed. But until now, it has been almost impossible to get information to help you make better decisions about products. Over the last five years, we have seen a very rapid growth in public concern for health and environmental issues from organics, to climate, to e-waste, to sweatshops. So I am very hopeful for the coming years and the potential for people to influence the global marketplace.
What are your top five green principles?
I don't have five green principles I would recommend people live by. Our choices and problems in the global environment are more complex - and often too nuanced in their trade-offs - to boil down to simple green principles.
Come now, Dr. O'Rourke! Why should we care are global supply chains? Make this real for us!?
As consumers in the US, we are at the tip of major global supply chains almost every time we choose a product. The brands we think we know have increasingly outsourced the actual manufacturing of their products to factories around the world.
Everyone knows our shoes and toys now come from Asia (primarily China). But increasingly, so do our frozen vegetables, seafood, vitamins, laptops, as well as our customer service, and even our accounting services, the people reading our X-rays, etc. etc.
How do you define localization? Is Good Guide.com an active agent of such a principle? (Visit Event Circle 6, Interview with Aaron Lehmner, Bay Localize, (http://www.planetshifter.com/node/350)
We are currently focused on rating manufactured products such as personal care, household chemicals, toys, and food. We are gradually adding more data on the country of origin as it is required by law (such as with fruits and vegetables this year).
Unfortunately, for most products, it is virtually impossible to find out the exact location of the factory or farm. One of our goals with GoodGuide is to work with other stakeholders to motivate greater transparency of the supply chains that produce the products we consume.
What is the difference between ecology and sustainability?
Ecology is the science of the relations between organisms and their environment. Sustainability involves the ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes, functions, biodiversity and productivity into the future.
How has your academic training translated to GoodGuide.com ?
I am an associate professor of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. I have spent the last 20 years researching the environmental, labor, and health impacts of global production systems. I have recently applied this research to a social venture start-up company – Good Guide – which has built a suite of tools that provide information about the environmental, social, and health performance of products and companies to consumers at the point of purchase (through web and mobile applications), and that empower people to screen and compare products based on their personal values and concerns.
Please define green washing and explain how this “act” has impacted your view of product rating schemes, including the one at Good Guide?
Green washing is the presentation of false or misleading information on the environmental performance of a product or company. This is often deployed to conceal or obscure the actual impacts of a product.
Good Guide seeks to cut through green marketing claims to the best available scientific information on the performance of products and companies.
What are some of the more interesting comments / request from your members?
We get requests everyday from people around the world asking us to rate products they buy. And then they ask us what they can do to help motivate firms to improve these products. People want products that work, are affordable, and meet their environmental and social concerns. That is the bottom-line question we get asked constantly and that we are trying to answer with Good Guide.
How do respond to the concern that your “top down” certification process is not as accurate as a “bottom-up,” or member-driven rating system?
We are not a certification system, but rather a platform for quantitative rating of products and companies. We have based our rating system on the best available science and data on products and companies. We see huge value in consumer opinions about products - such as regarding how they work, whether people like them, how products match personal preferences. In the coming months, we will be rolling out new ways for the public to personalize our data to their preferences.
Isn’t product review more of an art than science? Why or why not?
We are focused on data related to health hazards, nutritional impacts, environmental life-cycle impacts, and social impacts on workers, communities, and consumers. We seek out data that is scientifically rigorous, material to the major impacts of a product, and verified by credible third parties.
That said, every serious scientist will tell you that there are always value judgments built into scientific research.
How are you keeping unbiased ratings and shopping separate?
We are not a shopping site. We are an information platform that provides information for free to the public. However, our users asked us to link to Amazon.com and local retailers to help them find the products that rate well in our system. Our ratings are completely independent from, and never influenced by, web links to shopping sites.
How does GoodGuide.com make money?
We are still very early in our development and are primarily focused now on the research and development required to build a database and set of tools that people love and use regularly. We are just beginning to develop strategies to generate revenue so that we can continue to grow and expand Good Guide.
What are the central issues surrounding transparency in industry? At Good Guide?
Companies need to disclose the key material information which affects the environmental, social, and health impacts of their products. Consumers don't want to read CSR reports or green wash marketing. They want to know where their food, etc. was made? How it was made? What's really in it? And what were its impacts on workers, communities, the environment, and their health.
In my review of "Ecological Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman ("When is green crap still crap?," (http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1256). I suggest that his “activist approach” is “incremental,” or too few steps -- late in the game. How fast can Good Guide make a global impact on the issues of the day?
We are a very small organization working very hard to build GoodGuide.com into something that people use everyday. Our vision however, is that if we can play a small part in increasing transparency into products and supply chains, more consumers will be able to act on their concerns and values in the marketplace. And if more consumers demand improved products, we may together be able to shift markets and global production towards more sustainable products and companies.
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