Post by account_disabled on Mar 4, 2024 20:17:18 GMT -8
Most consumers say they want to buy products that are better for the environment. But it's hard to know when sustainability claims on packaging are greenwashing: does it matter that your shampoo comes in a refillable container if the shampoo itself is made with palm oil linked to deforestation?
Few have time to investigate. But a new Chrome extension called Finch will help you sort through your potential purchases when browsing Amazon.
Sustainable products on Amazon
In the words of Finch founder Lizzie Horvitz, a climate activist who began answering her friends' sustainability questions while working on the sustainability team at Unilever , the consumer goods giant:
"I realized that online content was very difficult to filter"
I found that online content was very difficult to filter. On the one hand, you have these absurd academic papers that are not intended for normal people to read.
And on the other hand, we have these very well Chile Mobile Number List -intentioned bloggers who often don't speak in terms of data or facts; They say things like this is 'eco-friendly' or 'all-natural', and that's not really based on any kind of science.
Lizzie Horvitz, founder of Finch.
Sustainable products on Amazon
According to Fast Company , at launch, the new tool includes reviews for tens of thousands of products across 41 of Amazon's most popular product categories, from toilet paper and diapers to toothpaste and mattresses. For each category, the team begins with detailed research into the challenges facing that type of product.
In the case of paper towels, for example, they studied current literature on how manufacturing paper towels can cause deforestation and runoff from paper mills. They then manually rate 10 or 20 products in the category and feed that information into a machine learning tool that pulls details of all the other products in the category from Amazon and automatically rates them.
Sustainable products on Amazon
They also get information from other groups that study companies' environmental performance, such as CDP, a nonprofit that asks companies to disclose details about climate risks.
Supply chains are incredibly complicated. They are not as transparent as they should be. Part of what helps is that we're not reinventing the wheel:
We are using many data sets that already exist... that right now are mainly aimed at companies and brands, and not at the end consumer. In reality, we are just adding all the information that already exists and putting it in one centralized place.
Lizzie Horvitz, founder of Finch.
Once the browser extension is installed, when you access a product, you see a score. Anything with a score higher than 6.5 is one of the least harmful in its category.
Nothing scores a perfect 10, he says: "If it's physical and it's out there, it's probably having some kind of negative impact on the environment. So the important thing for us is to show what position it is in, taking into account the relationship with the other products out there.
The answers are not always simple either; Using reusable cloth rags, for example, can produce more greenhouse gas emissions than paper towels if someone has an old, inefficient washing machine and doesn't wash many rags at once. The company also has a blog in which some specific situations are explained.
Sustainable products on Amazon
While he continues to refine the tool's design, Finch is only working with a small group of consumers, so you may end up on a waiting list at first. But the startup aims to soon expand to hundreds of other Amazon categories.
Next, he plans to rank the products on other big-box retailer websites and, ultimately, “any e-commerce site out there,” Horvitz says.
Few have time to investigate. But a new Chrome extension called Finch will help you sort through your potential purchases when browsing Amazon.
Sustainable products on Amazon
In the words of Finch founder Lizzie Horvitz, a climate activist who began answering her friends' sustainability questions while working on the sustainability team at Unilever , the consumer goods giant:
"I realized that online content was very difficult to filter"
I found that online content was very difficult to filter. On the one hand, you have these absurd academic papers that are not intended for normal people to read.
And on the other hand, we have these very well Chile Mobile Number List -intentioned bloggers who often don't speak in terms of data or facts; They say things like this is 'eco-friendly' or 'all-natural', and that's not really based on any kind of science.
Lizzie Horvitz, founder of Finch.
Sustainable products on Amazon
According to Fast Company , at launch, the new tool includes reviews for tens of thousands of products across 41 of Amazon's most popular product categories, from toilet paper and diapers to toothpaste and mattresses. For each category, the team begins with detailed research into the challenges facing that type of product.
In the case of paper towels, for example, they studied current literature on how manufacturing paper towels can cause deforestation and runoff from paper mills. They then manually rate 10 or 20 products in the category and feed that information into a machine learning tool that pulls details of all the other products in the category from Amazon and automatically rates them.
Sustainable products on Amazon
They also get information from other groups that study companies' environmental performance, such as CDP, a nonprofit that asks companies to disclose details about climate risks.
Supply chains are incredibly complicated. They are not as transparent as they should be. Part of what helps is that we're not reinventing the wheel:
We are using many data sets that already exist... that right now are mainly aimed at companies and brands, and not at the end consumer. In reality, we are just adding all the information that already exists and putting it in one centralized place.
Lizzie Horvitz, founder of Finch.
Once the browser extension is installed, when you access a product, you see a score. Anything with a score higher than 6.5 is one of the least harmful in its category.
Nothing scores a perfect 10, he says: "If it's physical and it's out there, it's probably having some kind of negative impact on the environment. So the important thing for us is to show what position it is in, taking into account the relationship with the other products out there.
The answers are not always simple either; Using reusable cloth rags, for example, can produce more greenhouse gas emissions than paper towels if someone has an old, inefficient washing machine and doesn't wash many rags at once. The company also has a blog in which some specific situations are explained.
Sustainable products on Amazon
While he continues to refine the tool's design, Finch is only working with a small group of consumers, so you may end up on a waiting list at first. But the startup aims to soon expand to hundreds of other Amazon categories.
Next, he plans to rank the products on other big-box retailer websites and, ultimately, “any e-commerce site out there,” Horvitz says.
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