Review of GoodGuide.com

Reviews are given 1-4 skinnies, based on the website's ability to cover the whole person regarding weight loss and health. This is an independent Review--I'm not being paid.

GoodGuide.com is a one-of-kind health website that bills itself as "the world's largest and most reliable source of health, environmental, and social performance information of household products." The website had it's debut on September 10, 2008 at the prestigious TechCrunch50 Conference where early-stage companies launch themselves and receive instant industry and media attention.

I heard about GoodGuide.com while watching the Channel 7 News a few days ago, and the business immediately caught my eye as a website that can assist us in living less toxic, greener, and healthier lifestyles.

With over 60,000 products currently in it's database, you can enter the name of a household item to receive a 1 to 10 rating on health, environmental, and social performance of the product.

• Health performance measures the impact of a business' operations and their communities, and individual impact such as risks of cancer, reproductive hazards, mutagenicity, endrocrine disruption, respiratory problems, and skin/eye irritation.


• Environmental ratings look at emissions, natural resources, environmental management and initiative programs, and life-cycle impact from manufacturing to transportation to final disposal.


• Social data gages the impact on employees of compensation, labor, human rights, diversity, working conditions, corporate governance and disclosure.

For instance, I took my 3-in-1 Maximum Hold Mousse from Clairol (manufactured by Procter and Gamble). Five products showed up, so I matched the container title and found my product had a 5.1 (fair) overall rating, 4.0 health, 5.1 environmental, and 6.2 on social performance.

The website also gave me a list of the Mousse's ingredients and under Behind the Rating there was a big red X that said "the company has a below average score in biodiversity policies." Then when I clicked on that comment, the website provided me with a further breakdown showing Procter and Gamble had low ratings of 3.5 for climate change recycling/emissions, 2.8 for air recycling/emissions, and 1.9 for their habitat conservation policy.

Other features of the website are that readers can write their own reviews, but since the site is so new it's lacking reader input. Also, if you decide you don't like your own product, you can always look at the right hand column for a list of top 10% rated similar products.

In my case, the top 10% list included Aura Cacia Amplying Foam (rated 7.8), Suave Shaping Mousse (rated 7.7), and Finesse Touchables (rated 7.7). GoodGuide.com also has a shopping list feature, where you can print a list of selected items and take that to a store to purchase or click on numerous links to Amazon.com to order by mail.

While the website makes me want to rush into my bathroom and grab up all my products just to see their toxic or green ratings, at the same time it's scary to think I might have to give up my favorites. In the coming months, they plan on adding ratings for food stuffs, toys and electronics.

GoodGuide.com is a realllly good thing -- it informs consumers about what's in their products and makes manufacturers be more responsible for what they produce. It also teaches consumers to purchase products from safety and socially responsible companies.

I would have given GoodGuide.com a full 4 skinnies, but the website is lacking in user-friendliness, and leaves me wanting more information. It's a good beta version but I hope in the future the website becomes more robust than just providing ingredients, canned language, and ratings.