Scores age quickly
Companies change leadership, sell divisions and abandon pledges. Each rating carries a review date; anything past its date should be treated as a rough guide until we update it.
Method, mission & limits
How we score, why we score that way, and where we can be wrong
A rating is only worth trusting if you can see how it was made and what it cannot tell you. This page is the whole method in plain language — including the parts that are uncomfortable for us.
Mission
Make the good choice the easy choice
Most people would rather their money supported clean air, clean water, living soil and peaceful, prosperous neighbourhoods. Almost nobody has the time to research which of the four thousand products in a supermarket does that. That gap — between good intentions and usable information — is the only problem this project exists to solve.
So we do the reading once, publish the reasoning in public, and let the resulting handful of decisions be made quickly and then forgotten about. The aim is calm, well-founded confidence: knowing that your ordinary spending is nudging the world in a direction you believe in.
We are not neutral about the goal. We are neutral about the evidence. If a company we like turns out to be failing on labour standards, its score will say so.
What we are optimising for
- Usable over exhaustive — a score you will actually read beats a report you will not.
- Comparable over absolute — the same weights for every company, so the numbers mean the same thing.
- Honest over flattering — the site only earns trust by saying uncomfortable things about brands people love.
- Hopeful over shaming — guilt does not sustain habits. Direction does.
- Correctable over defensive — every rating has a review date and a way to challenge it.
The method
Five pillars, fixed weights, published reasoning
Each pillar is scored from 0 to 100 using the evidence listed below. Those five numbers are then combined using the weights — so anyone can reproduce the overall score from the parts.
| Pillar | Weight | What we look for | What scores badly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Climate & Emissions | 25% | Measured scope 1-3 emissions, science-based targets, verified renewable electricity, published year-on-year reduction. | Unverified net-zero dates far in the future, offsetting used in place of reduction, no scope 3 data. |
| Supply Chain & Labor | 20% | Published factory lists, independent audits, living-wage commitments with dated targets, freedom of association. | Self-audits only, opaque tier-two suppliers, wage gaps documented by third parties, union opposition. |
| Materials, Waste & Circularity | 15% | Recycled and renewable inputs, plastic reduction, repair and take-back schemes, durable design. | Recyclable claims with no collection pathway, single-use packaging at scale, deliberately short product life. |
| Governance, Ownership & Transparency | 20% | Mission-locked or cooperative ownership, public impact reporting, audited data, accessible methodology. | Offshore or opaque ownership, unverifiable claims, internal standards marketed as independent. |
| Advocacy, Politics & Community | 20% | Lobbying aligned with climate and human rights, disclosure of political spending, positive community role. | Funding campaigns against climate or labour regulation, dark-money trade association memberships, community harm. |
Why advocacy carries 20%
It is the least visible pillar and usually the most consequential. A company can cut its own emissions by a third while quietly funding campaigns that stop the rules which would force every competitor to do the same. Weighting political behaviour heavily is how we avoid rewarding that.
Why 100% is deliberately not achievable
Almost every company on earth still ships goods, uses energy and depends on commodity supply chains. An A means "leader and pushing the sector forward", not "flawless". If you see a perfect score here, something has gone wrong with our method.
How partner ratings widen the coverage
One method has one set of blind spots. Fashion coverage here cannot match Good On You's, and nobody matches CDP on emissions disclosure. So our five pillars are the anchor, and verified partner ratings are blended in on top — normalised onto the same 0–100 scale first, so scores that measure different things are never averaged as if they measured the same thing.
60
Per cent of the composite held by our own five-pillar method. It never stops being the centre of gravity.
40
Per cent shared across the partner ratings that genuinely cover a company — split evenly, but capped at 20% for any single partner, so no one source can dominate.
0 / 0
Companies currently corroborated by two or more independent sources.
Three rules that keep this honest
- Silence is never a penalty. If no partner covers a company, the composite simply equals our own score. Nobody loses points because somebody else's coverage has a hole in it.
- We never invent a partner score. A number only enters the maths after it has been read from that organisation's own published assessment and linked in the company's sources.
- Attribution travels with the number. Every company page names each contributing organisation, shows its raw score beside its normalised one, and states its weight — so you can subtract any source you distrust and see what is left.
Where it stands today
The blend engine is live and running on every page. Coverage is honest rather than impressive: fashion and footwear are well served by partner ratings, groceries and retail less so, and banking and energy barely at all. That is a property of which organisations rate which sectors — not a hole in the arithmetic.
Each company page therefore reports how many independent sources back its score, and lists the partners that could widen it. A score resting on one source says so; so does a score resting on three.
See the partners and coverage notesThe grade scale
Do not read a grade as a percentage of "goodness"
Grades are bands, not ratios. The difference between 67 and 68 is not meaningful on its own. The difference between 30 and 80 is. Use the grade to decide whether a company is part of the solution, part of the problem, or somewhere in the messy middle — then read the pillar breakdown to see where you personally want to push.
Limits
Where this project is weak, and we would rather say so
Every rating system has blind spots. Knowing ours is part of using it well.
Public information is uneven
Large listed firms must disclose far more than small private ones. We penalise opacity lightly rather than assume the worst — but that does mean a small quiet company can look worse than it is.
We cannot see inside a factory
We rely on independent auditors, journalists and worker organisations. Where those are absent, we say so instead of guessing, which is why some scores are cautious.
Weights involve judgement
Why 25% for climate and 15% for materials? Because that reflects how much of the harm sits in each area. Reasonable people would choose differently — so the weights are published, and you can re-weight mentally.
Consumer action is not a substitute for policy
Voting with your wallet is powerful and it is not enough on its own. It is one lever, and we would rather tell you that than flatter you into thinking it is the only one.
Affordability is real
Many people cannot choose the higher-scoring option and should not be made to feel bad about it. That is why our guide leads with free actions — banking, repair, second-hand, sharing — before it ever suggests spending more.
What this site is not
It is not financial, investment, legal or professional advice. It is not an accusation against any company or the people who work there. It is not a complete picture of any brand, and it is not a substitute for the primary sources we link on every company page. Always read the source before you make a decision that matters to you.
Disclosure
How this site is paid for, and what that does not buy
This page rates companies on how they treat people and the planet, and there is a commercial link on the home page. It would be a poor joke if we hid that while asking you to trust the ratings. So, plainly:
The short version
The banner on our home page is an affiliate advertisement. If you follow the link and take up what is offered there, we may be paid. That is the whole arrangement, and it is why the banner is labelled as advertising rather than presented as one of our ratings. It is a paying placement, not a recommendation, and no amount of it changes a single grade anywhere on this site.
Why we are telling you
The whole argument of this site is that money carries influence, and that an interest someone holds should be visible rather than hidden. A scorecard that took money for a placement without saying so would be doing precisely the thing it exists to criticise. The disclosure is not a favour to you; it is the minimum this project needs in order to be worth reading at all.
It is stated in three places — on the banner itself, in the footer of every page, and here in full — because a disclosure you have to hunt for is not much of a disclosure.
What is genuinely at risk from it
An honest statement of the conflict, rather than a reassuring one: a site that rates consumer companies and earns money from an investment advertisement has an interest in readers deciding their money matters more than they thought. That could, in principle, colour how we frame things — including the prominence we give that banner on the home page.
Assume that interest exists. Weigh it yourself.
What does not happen
Companies cannot pay for a grade, and no company has ever been asked to. Nobody can buy a rating, influence a rating, or pay to be removed from this site. Scores come from the published five-pillar method and the external sources named on every company page, and the method is written down so you can reproduce any number yourself without trusting us. The advertising relationship is separate from all of it.
That is a statement of how the ratings are built, which you can verify by reading the method and the sources. It is not a claim that we are unbiased. Nobody running a business like this is.
What we would suggest you do
Treat the investment banner as advertising, because that is what it is — you will have noticed it is labelled as such. Take investment advice from the adviser of your choosing, and compare what you are told against a second opinion. That is sound practice with any adviser, and doubly so when the recommendation arrives from a site that may be paid for it.
If any of that puts you off the ratings entirely, that is a reasonable response, and the sources on every company page still work without us.
The home-page banner is also labelled “Advertisement · affiliate link” and carries a “Not a Dollar Compass rating” badge. Nothing on this site is investment, tax or legal advice. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal.
Contribute
How to add a company, or challenge a score
This is designed as a shared resource. The most valuable contributions are unglamorous: a company nobody has rated yet, a source that has been updated, or a correction where we got something wrong.
Send the company and your case
Use the Add a company form. One clear reason and one link is a perfectly good submission.
We check the primary sources
Certification registries, company reports, filings, benchmarks and credible journalism — not press releases.
We score it on the same five pillars
No special cases, no exceptions for brands we like. Sources get published next to the score.
It gets a review date
Anything that has not been checked recently is marked as due for review, so nobody is misled by stale data.
Questions
Things people ask us
Is this site affiliated with any of the companies rated?
No. Nothing here is paid for, sponsored or reviewed in advance by any company. We link to independent certifiers and primary sources precisely so you can check our work without trusting us. Where a company has been rated highly, it is because the published evidence supports it — not because of any relationship.
Why do you rate big companies at all if small ones are better?
Because most household spending goes to large companies, and because a change inside a giant has a much larger absolute effect than the same change inside a small brand. Small is not automatically sustainable: some small brands have unverifiable claims and offshore manufacturing. We score the evidence, not the size.
Can I trust a "carbon neutral" or "climate neutral" label?
Carefully. The label usually means a company has measured its emissions and then bought offsets or certificates to cover them. That is better than doing nothing, but it is not the same as emitting less. Look for a published, dated plan for actual reductions and evidence that the offsets are verified and additional — not just a logo on the box.
Do my individual choices really matter, given how large the problem is?
They matter, and they are not sufficient on their own. Individual spending shifts demand, which changes what companies do — that is well documented in food, textiles and finance. But it must sit alongside voting, campaigning and asking. The useful framing is not "is my choice enough?" but "what is the next cheapest action available to me?" This site tries to answer that second question.
How often are ratings updated?
Each company page shows the month it was last reviewed, and the whole dataset carries a version date. Anything older than about a year should be treated as indicative only. If you spot something that has changed, please tell us — corrections are the most useful contribution anyone can make.
Where can I host or reuse this, and can I edit it?
This site is deliberately built as plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no database and no build
step, so you can upload the folder to any web host — including the public_html
directory on Bluehost — and it simply works. All the ratings live in one readable file,
js/data.js, so you can adjust scores, add companies or localise the currency without
touching anything else. See the README for a step-by-step upload guide.
Where do submitted companies go?
Because the site has no server-side database, submissions are saved in the browser you used and a plain-text copy is prepared for you to email on. That keeps the whole project static and free to host anywhere. If you deploy the project on a platform that provides a data table, the same form will store submissions there automatically instead — the code detects which situation it is in.
One more time, briefly
Companies follow money. Money follows habits. Habits follow decisions, and decisions are cheap. Change two of them, keep them, and let the compounding do the rest — for cleaner air and water, for soil that holds carbon, and for neighbourhoods where the chance to prosper is not reserved for the few.