Integrity in Sustainability Claims:
HowGood Is My Product?
In today’s market, sustainability claims on consumer-packaged goods are both ubiquitous and increasingly necessary, both to stand out as a brand and to meet consumer demand for environmentally friendly products. But what does it mean to be “sustainable” or “eco-friendly”? And what is the fine line between an earnest attempt to communicate a brand’s sustainability initiatives versus down-right greenwashing? A proliferation of class-action lawsuits, from Bumble Bee Seafood’s sustainability claims to Evian’s carbon-neutral claims shows that the answer is not always clear.
Brands are left in a challenging position: being forced to innovate new ways of reducing their environmental and social footprint while simultaneously lacking clarity about how to communicate these initiatives. At New Hope Network, we work with thousands of brands and see this challenge first-hand. That’s why, when designing our new Beacon Discovery platform, we knew we wanted to help brands tell their sustainability stories using third-party, data-derived measurements.
Beacon Discovery: Helping Brands Tell Their Full Story
Beacon Discovery is an online platform that enables brands and retailers to connect anytime, anywhere. It gives brands a way to communicate to retail buyers, year-round, who they are, why their products stand out, and demonstrate their commitment to transparency. To help brands validate those claims, we’ve partnered with HowGood, an independent research company which provides sustainability intelligence to food companies. HowGood is the world’s largest product sustainability database with over 33,000 ingredients, drawing from over 600 data sources and certifications to help brands measure, highlight, and even improve their environmental and social impact.
HowGood calculates a product’s sustainability estimate based on eight key metrics: greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, biodiversity, labor risk exposure, soil health, land use, animal welfare, and processing. HowGood then assigns a product estimate measured against other products in the HowGood database as follows:
- “Best”: better than 95% of food products assessed by HowGood;
- “Great”: better than 85% of food products assessed by HowGood; and
- “Good”: better than 70% of food products assessed by HowGood.
HowGood estimates are part of the Beacon package, at no additional cost, and brands have the option to keep their estimates private if they choose.
The Big Picture: Clear Communication, Instant Connection
Companies should be able to communicate the efforts they make to reduce their environmental and social impact, but as we have seen from a myriad of federal and state laws to consumer lawsuits, this is not always as straightforward as it seems. HowGood’s consistent and transparent methodology benefits retailers and consumers alike. HowGood’s assessments enable brands to confidently display objective, research-backed claims on Beacon Discovery.
Some brands wonder whether it’s in their best interest to share an assessment they’re working to improve. Retailers tell us that transparency is important to them and even when estimates need improvement, they like to see a brand’s commitment to truth-telling and are attracted to brands working to improve their impact. With Beacon Discovery, buyers can more easily obtain a holistic view of a company, enabling them to stock shelves confidently with the mission-driven brands consumers increasingly demand.
