Evergrade – disrupting retail through ratings consumers can trust

Have you ever gone to a store and found yourself feeling overwhelmed by the large number of labels plastered on retail products? Which ones are legitimate? Which ones can you trust? How are you meant to find out which products are actually as sustainable as they’re claiming to be?

Thanks to Evergrade, you can now trace back the environmental impact of everything you buy. This helps you make more environmentally friendly purchases while also gaining a better understanding of the environmental journey your products have been on.

Instead of relying on expensive marketing campaigns tailored to make you think a product is environmentally friendly, you can now go straight to the source to find out for yourself. Evergrade is on a mission to determine the impact of the goods we buy.

How does Evergrade rate products?

Have you ever stopped to think about what truly makes a product environmentally sustainable? Can’t all brands just claim their products are ‘eco-friendly’ and call it a day?

While consumer protection law varies across the globe, it’s generally understood that brands can make environmental claims about their products so long as they don’t mislead consumers. And with a bit of crafty copywriting and an expert marketing team, brands can make bold claims about their sustainability practices without ever having to back them up - until now.

Evergrade acts as an impartial watchdog that ensures environmentally conscious consumers are purchasing products they can trust through a carefully curated rating.

Here’s how each product’s overall rating is calculated.

Carbon footprint

Evergrade considers carbon footprint to be one of the most important elements when it comes to rating products. This concerns the greenhouse gases emitted from the sourcing, manufacturing and transportation of products.

To determine the carbon footprint of products, Evergrade measures the amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) used to create a product. This, coupled with the product’s carbon efficiency ratio determines the overall rating given to products. But carbon footprint doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about a product and whether or not it’s sustainable. It acts as one small piece of a larger puzzle.

Predicted durability

Put simply, products that have long lifespans are considered to be more sustainable than products that need to be replaced often. The less likely a product is to end up in a landfill, the better its predicted durability score.

Evergrade analyses products’ predicted lifespans and consider the environmental impact of how often they will need to be replaced. But it’s not as simple as quickly glancing over a product and guessing how long it will last. Things such as raw materials, warranties and a scientific assessment of compressive strength are measured and thoroughly analysed. It’s complicated stuff that produces a trustworthy result.

Circularity

Circularity involves looking at the materials a product is made of and how likely they are to be reused at the end of life. It also explores the amount of wastage involved when it comes to production, favouring items that can easily reuse materials.

Bonus points are given to companies that offer customers ‘take-back’ programs. These are programs that allow consumers to return products once they’re no longer usable. By placing the disposal responsibility on businesses, this in turn encourages companies to better design their products to be more sustainable.

Certifications

With thousands of eco-certifications in existence, it’s hard to know which ones are legitimate. Evergrade goes through each certificate awarded to a product and analyses how legitimate it is. This results in a more accurate depiction of how ecologically friendly a product is.

Packaging

The last element that’s measured when it comes to producing a product rating is packaging. This one is fairly straightforward. The more plastic and other unnecessary materials a product’s packaging uses, the worse its score is going to be.

Evergrade awards higher scores to products that use environmentally responsible packaging materials.

Scales you can understand

Very few people have the time to go through mountains of text to find out the environmental impact of the products they buy. That’s why Evergrade has created a user-friendly colour-coded scale to tell consumers how each product compares to alternatives in certain categories.

Coupled with numerical values between 0 and 100, you can easily identify how sustainable a product is through the rating Evergrade gives it as dictated above. This helps you make a quick decision about your product in question without sifting through the data.

Why does this matter?

It goes without saying that there’s increasing consumer demand for eco-conscious goods. While some companies really are doing the right thing by creating sustainable products, others can easily trick people into thinking their goods are much more sustainable than they are.

With Evergrade’s help, consumers are more clued up than ever. That’s why more than 70 leading brands are already on board with its exciting venture. The fastest-growing brands are embracing sustainability. The secret to getting ahead in this day and age is to create products that cause little or no harm to the environment.

How does the integration process work?

Evergrade is already making big strides in the retail space. Targeting retailers with eco-conscious consumers, Evergrade offers 3-tiered certifications when scoring products. This is licensed directly into third-party e-commerce platforms, allowing customers to see the badge awarded to each product directly on a brand’s website or through third-party retailers.

The future of Evergrade

With more and more people making the conscious decision to purchase eco-friendly products, the appeal for sustainable items and practices isn’t just a short phase. It’s here to stay.

Evergrade is expected to expand to millions of SKUs, working with the world’s leading manufacturing partners and e-commerce retailers. This exciting venture will disrupt the Eco-TIC (Testing, Inspection and Certification) market and provide consumers with the one thing that’s so clearly missing from the products they buy – transparency.

If you'd like to find out more about Evergrade, please get in touch.