How we rate brands
Ever noticed how many “best sustainable brands” lists never tell you what sustainable means to them?
That bugged us too. So here’s the whole thing: what we measure, what each number means, and which brands we’ve deliberately left out.
Two things before the detail. This directory isn’t a neutral index, so a brand that falls short doesn’t get a bad profile here, it gets left out and covered in our articles instead. And nobody can pay for a spot or a score. Our affiliate disclosure covers how the money does reach us.
The five things we score
Each brand gets scored from 0 to 1.0 on five criteria. Add them up, and that’s the rating out of 5. No weighting, no secret formula.
Independent certification
How much of what a brand claims has been checked by somebody who doesn’t work there.
A certification only counts with us if the body issuing it is independent, publishes its criteria, and actually audits. B Corp, GOTS, Fair Trade Certified, Leaping Bunny, MADE SAFE, OEKO-TEX: those mean something. A logo a brand designed for itself doesn’t.
Top marks go to a brand holding several real certifications across both the product and the company. One strong audited certification across most of the range scores well. A single product-level cert is worth about half. Claims with nothing behind them score zero, and the profile says so.
One trap comes up constantly, so it’s worth naming here. EWG runs a rating system and a verification mark, and they’re not the same thing. A good Skin Deep score is EWG’s read on an ingredient list. EWG VERIFIED is a mark the brand applied for and got audited against. We check which one a brand actually holds, because the difference is exactly what greenwashing lives on.
Who owns them
This is the check that turns up the most surprises, and almost nobody else runs it.
You may have assumed that a small-batch brand with a founder’s story on the About page is independent. Often it isn’t. Pai belongs to the family behind Clarins. Well People belongs to e.l.f. Wild was bought by Unilever in 2025. Coyuchi reads independent and is roughly 97% held by a venture partnership, which turned up in an SEC filing rather than anywhere on their website. None of which their own marketing even mentions.
That doesn’t automatically disqualify anyone. We used to exclude conglomerate-owned brands outright, then noticed we’d stated that rule and broken it inside the same article, so now we disclose and let you decide. Independent or founder-owned scores highest. A larger parent with a clean record costs a brand half a point.
What does disqualify a brand is a parent whose conduct works against what the brand sells. Size and conduct are different questions, and that distinction is why Organic Basics isn’t here.
Transparency
What does a brand tell you before you have to ask?
Named suppliers, full material or ingredient disclosure, published impact data including the parts that don’t flatter them: that’s the top of the scale. Clear sourcing with no supplier list sits a notch below. Marketing language standing in for information scores near the bottom.
Self-reported transparency still earns credit, just less of it than the audited kind.
Value for money
Not “is it cheap”. What does the price actually buy?
We rewrote this one after it broke. The first version scored brands on affordability in absolute terms, which left Patagonia and True Botanicals sitting in the same price band half a point apart for no reason we could have explained to anyone. A $$$ jacket you wear for fifteen years and then resell through a take-back program is good value. A $$$ serum you finish in eight weeks isn’t, however lovely it is.
So a premium that pays back through durability, refills or resale scores near the top. A price set by positioning rather than substance scores low. Cheap-but-bad still scores badly, because the fifth criterion catches it separately.
Does it actually work
A product that fails at its job isn’t a sustainable choice, it’s a thing you replace.
Works as well as the conventional version: full marks. Works with a limitation we’d warn a friend about: most of the way there. Only worth it if the ethics matter to you more than the performance? We’ll say that in plain words rather than burying it in the last paragraph.
What the numbers mean
Most brands here land between 3.5 and 4.5. That’s not grade inflation, it’s the inclusion rule doing its job, because a brand that would score a 2 never gets a profile in the first place.
Above 4.5 means we couldn’t find much to caveat. The 4.0 range means recommended, with one known tradeoff. Between 3.5 and 4.0 you’re looking at something worth buying where the tradeoff is real and we’ve named it. Below 3.5, nothing gets published without a human reviewing it first.
Every profile shows its working. The five sub-scores are recorded against it, so if you think we’ve been soft on certification somewhere, you can see exactly what we gave and take it up with us.
When we get it wrong
Certifications lapse and brands get bought. Formulas change quietly, without a press release.
Ethique is the honest example. We couldn’t find its B Corp certification in B Lab’s own directory, months after publishing a 3.5 that leaned on it. So the certification score came down, the rating went to 3.3, and the profile now says only what we could verify and doesn’t guess at why. It stays in the directory, because “how good is this” and “would we recommend it at all” are two separate questions.
Dr. Bronner’s is the other one. It hasn’t been a B Corp since February 2025, and our copy said otherwise for months afterward, because we’d read it off a badge still sitting on their own website. A badge isn’t evidence. We check the issuer’s directory now, every time, and there’s an automated check in our publishing pipeline that fails the build when an article claims a certification the brand profile doesn’t list.
Spotted something stale? Tell us. We’d much rather hear it from you than find it ourselves six months late.
Who we’ve left out, and why
Two brands are excluded by name.
Organic Basics was acquired by Delta Galil in 2022, and Delta Galil appears on the UN OHCHR database of businesses with activities tied to Israeli settlements. That’s the ownership-conduct test, and it settles the question before any score gets calculated. We still cover the brand in articles with the ownership stated, because telling you what’s true about a company is a different job from endorsing it.
Caraway scored 3.1, the lowest anything has come out at: no third-party certification, a ceramic coating that wears out and needs replacing, and $$$ pricing that assumes it doesn’t. The draft profile ended up telling readers to buy Lodge or Made In instead. A recommendation that recommends something else isn’t a recommendation.
Nobody can buy their way in
There’s no rate card, because there’s nothing for sale. We don’t accept payment for a profile, a rating, or a place on a list, and we don’t take free product in exchange for coverage either.
Some links here earn us a commission when you buy through them. That’s how the site pays for itself, it costs you nothing extra, and it has no bearing on a score. We’ve rated brands that pay us nothing above brands that pay us plenty.
Want to see the ratings in action? Every profile is in the directory.
Frequently asked questions
How does Good Brands Earth rate sustainable brands?
Five criteria, each scored from 0 to 1.0 and added together for a rating out of 5: independent certification, who owns the brand, transparency, value for money, and whether the product actually works. Every profile records its five sub-scores, so any number can be checked against its working.
Do brands pay to be in the Good Brands Earth directory?
No. There’s no paid placement, no sponsored profile, and no rate card. Some links earn a commission when you buy through them, which never affects a rating or whether a brand gets listed.
Why isn’t every brand in the directory?
Because it’s a list of endorsements rather than an index. A brand only gets a profile if we’d recommend it to a friend. Brands that fall short get covered in our articles instead, where we can say what’s wrong without it reading as a recommendation.
What counts as a good GBE rating?
Most brands here sit between 3.5 and 4.5. Above 4.5 means we couldn’t find much to caveat. Below 3.5 doesn’t get published without a human review first, and it’s rare.
How often do you re-check a rating?
Whenever something verifiable changes, and ownership is the field most likely to move. Certification claims get checked against the issuing body’s own directory rather than the brand’s website, because a badge on a brand’s site keeps running long after the certification lapses.
Does a conglomerate-owned brand get excluded?
Not automatically. Being owned by a larger company costs a brand half a point on the ownership criterion and gets stated plainly in the profile. What does get a brand excluded is a parent whose conduct works against what the brand is selling.