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By Alastair Iles, October 08, 2009

GoodGuide users are concerned about the environmental and health impacts of chemicals used in consumer products. Unfortunately, many chemicals on the market have not been tested thoroughly for their safety. This is largely due to the antiquated Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which makes it nearly impossible for regulators to step in, even when chemicals are shown to be risky.

Last week, Lisa Jackson, the new Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, gave a surprising speech. Previously, experts had thought that the Obama Administration wasn’t prioritizing chemicals reform. At the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Ms. Jackson noted that children’s bodies contain higher levels of chemicals that may harm their development. She lamented,

Not only has TSCA fallen behind the industry it’s supposed to regulate – it’s been proven an inadequate tool for providing the protection against chemical risks that the public rightfully expects.

Ms. Jackson called for six new principles to drive the EPA’s overhaul of US chemical regulation. One that’s particularly relevant to GoodGuide is greater transparency:

Manufacturers must develop and submit the hazard, use, and exposure data demonstrating that new and existing chemicals are safe.

The EPA now intends to develop new tools to require manufacturers to disclose this information if they don’t do so voluntarily. While we’re excited about the new policy, we believe that companies shouldn’t wait for EPA or Congress to require this. They should immediately start disclosing, candidly, what their products contain if they want consumers to trust in them.

To see a more detailed blog critique, visit here.

Professor Alastair Iles is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Iles studies science, technology, and environment, with a focus on how technologies – ranging from chemistry, energy systems, environmental health monitoring, to information technology - affect society and the environment. He received his PhD in Environmental Law and Policy from Harvard University, and previously studied Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

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By Dara O'Rourke, October 01, 2009

The European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) signaled this week that they will be more strictly regulating product claims.

The agency reviewed more than 500 claims regarding the nutritional value or healthiness of food products - such as assertions of “Low Fat,” “High Fiber,” and “Probiotic” - and approved only one third of the claims reviewed. Not to belabor the math here, but this means that two thirds of product health claims were either false or not scientifically backed.

As the EFSA reported:

Almost half of the evaluations with unfavourable outcomes were owing to a lack of information on the substance on which the claim is based, for example ‘probiotic’ bacteria and botanical substances. Without clear identification of the substance in question, the Panel could not verify that the scientific evidence provided to EFSA related to the same substance for which the health benefits are claimed.

Europe has rules that protect consumers from false claims, or claims based on misleading or difficult to understand information. EFSA is now working through a backlog of over 4000 product health claims.

This appears to be an important step forward in leveling the playing field on what firms can claim about their products, and likely in incentivizing firms to disclose more scientific data on their products and ingredients before they make health claims.

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By Dara O'Rourke, September 23, 2009

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced this week that industrial greenhouse gas emitters in the US must begin collecting data on their carbon emissions starting in January 2010, with disclosure required in the first quarter of 2011.

As EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson announced :

For the first time, we begin collecting data from the largest facilities in this country, ones that account for approximately 85% of the total U.S. emissions. The American public, and industry itself, will finally gain critically important knowledge and with this information we can determine how best to reduce those emissions.”

This is a critical first step towards being able to manage - and then potentially trade - carbon emissions in the US. This is also critical step towards greater transparency into how different companies are performing on carbon issues.

More and more GoodGuide users are comparing products for not only the health impacts on them personally, but also for their broader environmental impacts such as global climate change. GoodGuide currently draws data from a number of sources on carbon reporting. But this data is currently only as good as firms’ voluntarily choose to make it.

Groups like the Carbon Disclosure Project and ClimateCounts have made great strides in motivating firms to disclose more and better information on their carbon emissions. But having the EPA step into this issue and set a level playing field for all firms, is a great step forward on transparency.

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By Dara O'Rourke, September 19, 2009

My wife and daughter used to love SIGG water bottles. They loved the colors and patterns, they loved the reusability, and most of all they loved that they were free of bisphenol-A.

Or so they thought.

Last night over dinner with a large group of family and friends, my wife exclaimed, “I am never buying another SIGG. The CEO lied to us. And then he made me pay postage on top of everything!!!”

In a single act of non-transparency, SIGG turned a loyal customer into an evangelist against the company. How could this have happened?

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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, 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 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 TechNation 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. So please let us know how you think we can do a better job of supporting these conversations on transparency.

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By Dara O'Rourke, May 15, 2009

Tonight on his PBS show, Bill Moyers asked whether the movement towards “radical transparency” that Daniel Goleman describes in his new book Ecological Intelligence is really happening. Goleman responded by pointing to a generational shift that shows younger people not only care more about environmental and social issues, but that they also have the social networking prowess to spread this information.

I agree with Goleman, but believe the movement towards greater transparency is happening even faster than this generational change.

As just one example, over the last month there has been a major shift towards greater transparency by household products companies here in the US. Historically, household chemical manufacturers in the US did not have to disclose their ingredients unless they fell within very specific parameters (e.g., active ingredients above a certain concentration that are known to be toxic). This means most chemicals do NOT have to be listed.

To understand the irrationality of our current product labeling system, go into your bathroom and look at your liquid hand soap and then look at the harshest chemical you can find - maybe your toilet bowl or tile cleaner. Notice that the hand soap - which is classified as a personal care product - lists all of its ingredients, in order of concentration. While the much stronger household cleaning chemicals likely lists one or even zero ingredients.

Given the opportunity to not be transparent with their customers about the chemicals in their products, most companies choose to hide behind a veil of marketing claims, and more recently green claims.

But this is very rapidly changing. Without any new government regulation, but some important non-profit efforts (check out the campaign of Women’s Voices for the Earth), mainstream companies are following the lead of smaller green companies, and disclosing their ingredients voluntarily. Clorox recently announced that they are disclosing all of their ingredients on their website. SC Johnson followed suit. As did Method Home.

[Let me know if you know of any other companies releasing ingredient data recently.]

These companies had previously argued that their ingredient lists were confidential business information, and that they couldn’t disclose them because of a threat of lost market share. I believe these same companies are now realizing that the real threat to their sales and their brands is from being considered non-transparent. As they say, the cover-up is often worse than the crime in the US.

This is just one of many examples of increased transparency in the marketplace. I will be discussing more of these cases in the coming weeks.

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By Dara O'Rourke, April 27, 2009

With all the press around the current swine flu epidemic, which has killed more than 150 people and sent thousands more to hospitals, it is somewhat disturbing that officials have not yet uncovered the source of the outbreak. Bloggers around the world have been working overtime to document the chain of illnesses, and more importantly to try to identify the source of the the virus in Mexico.

It now appears that the first illnesses were reported in small town called La Gloria, in the state of Vera Cruz in Mexico. La Gloria also happens to be the home to a massive hog farm owned by Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest producer of hogs.

As Ed Harris from Local Foods Research explains, “Bloggers… are exploring the links between Mexico’s industrial hog production industry—Smithfield Foods in particular—and the emergence of the new viral strain.”

Tom Philpott from Grist.org asserts that:

Smithfield operates massive hog-raising operations in Perote, Mexico, in the state of Vera Cruz, where the outbreak originated. The operations, grouped under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol, raise 950,000 hogs per year…. The Mexico City daily La Jornada has also made the link. According to the newspaper, the Mexican health agency IMSS has acknowledged that the orginal carrier for the flu could be the “clouds of flies” that multiply in the Smithfield subsidiary’s manure lagoons.

We don’t have any scientific proof that Smithfield is the source of this virus. But we have known for some time about the potential environmental and health risks related to Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations—also known as CAFOs.

While there is no concern that pork coming from Smithfield is contaminated in any way, as swine flu is spread via human contact, not food, this story once again reinforces the need for Country of Origin Labeling Laws to help us track an increasingly global and industrialized food system.

It will be a real be a wake up call if health officials confirm that this potentially fatal health threat, which is now spreading through casual human contact, originated in CAFOs that are the source of much of our food.

UPDATE: A number of other journalists, including the Guardian (UK) have been investigating the potential links to Smithfields CAFOs. The company, Smithfield Foods, denies any connection to the outbreak.

UPDATE #2: The author of the original Grist post has a follow-up piece on the controversy.

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By Dara O'Rourke, April 22, 2009

Daniel Goleman, the author of the best selling book Emotional Intelligence, has just published a fantastic new book called Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Changes Everything.

In this book, Goleman argues that markets are shifting towards something he calls “Radical Transparency” as consumers demand much more information on the products they buy everyday. With advances in global information systems, and in the science of measuring product impacts through tools such as Life Cycle Assessment, the public is finally beginning to be able to access comprehensive information on the trade-offs inherent in their purchasing decisions.

Goleman asserts:

If we get better, more complete information about the true effects of an item at the moment we are deciding whether to buy it, we could make wiser decisions. Such full disclosure can make each of us an agent for small, gradual changes that, when multiplied by millions, will ripple through the industrial enterprise, from manufacturing and design, through supply chains and transport, to the distant ends of consumption.

In the New York Times earlier this week, Goleman and Greg Norris (one of GoodGuide’s advisors), published an op-art piece showing what this kind of transparency could tell you about your choice in bottles.

In the book, Goleman surveys a host of efforts to advance Ecological Intelligence, and he very generously concludes that:

“GoodGuide offers proof of concept, a concrete example of how radical transparency might work.”

While flattered, and very much aligned with this vision for providing the public much better information on products and companies, or own efforts to advance greater transparency are only just getting going. Fortunately, we are now part of a strong and growing ecosystem of organizations aligned for increased transparency and accountability in the marketplace. And more importantly, the public itself is driving this wave of interest in radical transparency.

Our job remains to listen to your needs and to get you better and better information to help you make decisions in your life. If Goleman is right, we will be busy for the coming decade!

If you want to learn more about the research behind the book, or to hear interviews delving into the issues covered in the book, including one with yours truly, check out the Ecological Awareness page at More Than Sound.

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By Dara O'Rourke, April 16, 2009

With Earth Day approaching, green claims are sprouting like daffodils through the spring dirt. And with what seems like almost every company claiming they are now green (Really? Chevron? Really?), it is hard to see through this green noise to which products and companies are actually taking significant steps to improve their environmental performance.

A report out this week from the Canadian firm TerraChoice asserts that 98% of green package claims suffer from at least one of “Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” Joel Makower, one of my favorite analysts of green marketing does a nice job deconstructing TerraChoice’s analysis and the marketing mixed into their own report. Nonetheless, TerraChoice comes to some interesting findings:

The total number of green products is up 79% since 2007.
Green advertisements have almost tripled since 2006.
Of the 2,219 products they studied that make green claims, over 98% committed one of TerraChoice’s seven “sins” of greenwashing.
Toys, baby products, cosmetics and cleaning products are the four categories in which green claims – and greenwashing – are most common.

Now you know why GoodGuide started by rating personal care, baby care, toys, and household cleaning chemicals. Industry has been spending huge sums greenwashing in exactly the categories that have the most problematic chemicals, and for which the public has become most concerned. GoodGuide is in one sense, a simple tool to help you see through marketing claims to the actual environmental and health impacts of products and companies.

The good news in all of this is that consumer concerns are finally getting attention in the marketplace. Brands and retailers now see a real threat in consumer awareness around toxic ingredients, pollution from production, sweatshops, etc. And an increasing number of firms see a real opportunity if they can convince you that their products are green and clean.

So what is a smart shopper to do amidst this Earth Day green marketing blitz? Embrace this shift in the market and empower yourself even more. Find out what really goes into your favorite products. Learn which companies really rate best on environmental performance. Demand full disclosure - not pretty green packaging - from the companies you support with your hard earned money.

And maybe - at least for Earth Week - ask yourself if you can actually NOT buy a product you are considering. Can you make your own drain declogger (just baking soda and vinegar) rather than buying a toxic chemical? Or eliminate air fresheners all together (by just opening windows!) Or give up deodorant? Okay, scratch that. I don’t want you to lose all your friends:)

And finally, if you really want to help the environment, we all need to work for smarter government policies on climate change, pollution prevention, green chemistry, and product regulation to eliminate hazards before they are created. We need to both change our light bulbs and our legislation this year.

Happy Earth Day!

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By Dara O'Rourke, April 15, 2009

Every year on April 15th, Americans are reminded of a passion that literally helped found our nation: our collective distaste for taxes. But with our government so clearly in need of funds to address major infrastructure, education, health, social, and environmental concerns — I am not opposing taxes, but rather joining a growing group of people wondering if we are just taxing the wrong things.

Why do we tax the things we like and want more of: income, profits, sales of products, etc.? Shouldn’t we instead be taxing things we don’t like and want to incentivize people to reduce: pollution, carbon emissions, inefficient use of resources, etc.?

As we have been studying food recently, what about taxing junk food? Or ingredients of concern like sugar and high fructose corn syrup in food products?

Read what a recent report in the New England Journal of Medicine has to say on the issue…