I’ve reviewed a ton of green products over the years and have pretty comprehensive review criteria in place. Since I post green product reviews here, you’d probably like to have some idea about how I rate products. With this in mind, I’ve compiled the following info…
All the green product I review are rated on a five tree system using the pretty trees you see above.
- Five trees is the greenest and best score a product can get. I rarely give fives, so when I do you can be sure it’s a killer green product.
- Four trees is a pretty darn good green product.
- Three trees means a product is okay. Not great but not horrible at all either. I usually give a three to a product that could be better with some minor adjustments.
- Two trees to one tree is a product probably not worth your time or it’s just not very green.
- Zero trees is the worst. In fact I don’t know that I’ve ever given a product a zero. The company would have to be greenwashing for sure, have shady ethics or the product would have to be simply terrible.
I rate all products with the same extensive criteria and scoring system regardless of if I bought and paid for the product with my own money or if I got it free from the company.
Keep in mind that I have a TON of criteria for a few reasons.
- I HATE when I read green books or blogs and the writer fails to disclose why they like or don’t like a product. “It’s cool,” to me, is not a review that families can use. I’ve read way too many green product reviews where you can tell the blogger was just happy to get something free and so they give the product a good review (even if that product is questionable).
- Why should I bother reviewing something if I’m going to do a half-ass job. What’s the point?
- Lastly, I know that some readers choose products based on reviews they read and I never want families to use products that are unsafe, or pay more for green products when they don’t need to. Plus, I use these products; my son uses these products; my friends and family may use these. Beyond readers, I don’t want my own family using questionable products.
In any case, this is how I review products. It’s time consuming, but in order to choose real green products it’s also a necessity. Plenty of companies won’t disclose. You need to conduct your own research. You can use my green product criteria to form your own list if you like.
How do you separate the real green products from the bunk green products?
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
This is the best scoring technique. I like it.