GoodGuide helps you find healthy, sustainable, ethical products

September 10, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments |

GoodGuide has a simple goal — to become the one website you visit to understand whether a product is “good,” however you define good. That could mean safe for your kids, environmentally friendly or manufactured in an ethical way, whatever matters to you.

The company just finished its presentation at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco, and it looks like another audience favorite.

If you’re looking for a good quality laundry detergent, for example, it’ll show you that Seventh Generation ranks highest overall, but it will also let you drill down to show you how that laundry does specifically on an environmental measure (its ranked only 8.6 out of ten), personal health measure (it ranks higher, at 9.6 out ten) and socially (8.8.)

good guide laundry

Initially, this sounds like a no-brainer idea, and the big question from the panel of judges was, “Why hasn’t someone does this already?” Chief executive Dara O’Rourke, who is also an associate professor of environmental and labor policy at UC Berkeley, says there are sites that provide product guides around individual issues — animal rights, human rights and so on — but none that try to pull everything together.

The site provides data at whatever level you’re interested in. There is an overall score, then an overall health socre, overall environmental score and overall social score, then you can drill down and find out specific data points. O’Rourke says GoodGuide measures 140 criteria in all.

The other really exciting thing about GoodGuide is its mobile functionality, which allows you to do research while you’re at the store. GoodGuide just launched a text messaging feature, where customers can send out the bar code of a product via text message, then GoodGuide replies with information. The company also plans to launch an iPhone app in three weeks.


I haven’t been at every TechCrunch50 session, but this is my favorite of the companies I’ve seen. The judges were unanimous in their support too. They pointed out that the idea may sound basic at first, but compiling and weighing this data actually requires a lot of work and expertise.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • ChrisV
    This seems very similar to SustainLane although SL relies on an approach similar to Yelp and has users rate the products. Other companies like Co-Op America, Gaiam, Lime and several others also rate products. This seems like a lot of data but I wonder how much a person would actually use. Their main challenge will be getting people to their website. No one in the green/sustainability space has figured that out yet and A LOT of money has been spent already.
  • Well, I'm not really knowledgeable about those sites, but certainly I think there's a vast difference between a site based on user ratings and one that compiles data from other sources.
  • Well GoodGuide seems good. I would like to know more about it. mobile functionality is good.
  • I see the Goodguide future too bright and shiny flying on the top of the world. Just amazing idea and thank you for bringing such useful information. I like its data capacity for all level of individuals. Your expressing view is just wow. Without your writing style it was not possible to justify with the product.
  • Goodguide is really a good guide. I like all the functions thought didn’t try it so far. Any way seems to appealing and I like it. Thanks for useful information and post. Good times.
  • Goodguide is a new name to me. Didn’t try it yet but wanna give a try. Thanks for your nice post. I live your writing style.
  • Today with the new technologies it has become very difficult to know about new things and trends. Goodguide is god place to get each and everything at a single point. Thanks for introducing this. I like it.
  • Googguide is innovative. I like its functionality. It is for those who are comfort lover and want shopping with ease. Thanks to goodguide for making life more easier.
  • Jennifer
    Goodguide is not making life easier. It still giving toxic products the "good" ratings even those many of these products include toxic ingredients. The technologies is great but stricter guidelines are really needed to make this true enough for todays conscious consumer.
  • Wow! Thanks to everyone for the interesting comments about GoodGuide. We are constantly trying to improve our tools and data. We launched the beta site in September, and we are grateful for your comments and critiques as we test and evolve the product rating system. Our aim is for the product scores to ultimately be personalized to your values. The scores are a composite of a health, social and environmental rating. If health is the most important thing to you, we intend to make it easy to focus solely on the health data to see how it performs in that category. For another user, climate change may be the single most important issue, so we want that user to be able to drill down to review only the product's environmental performance. Please continue to explore our site and send us your useful suggestions! --Jodie, GoodGuide
  • edhardy622
    My girlfriend bought me a pair of Chestnut color UGG boots short for Christmas.
    http://www.uggboots365.co.uk