How we Evaluate and Rate Brands
Commons' mission is to help you sift through the greenwashing to find the most sustainable choices for you. We're empowering a collective shift to more intentional spending while influencing brands to operate more sustainably.
Our Rating Scale
We rate brands based on how well they're measurably contributing to a more sustainable economy.
Best
Throughout their supply chains, these brands are taking responsibility for their impact on the people and planet. They're sustainability leaders in their industry, doing more than their fair share.
Good
These brands are exceeding expectations by actively reducing their carbon footprint and minimizing waste.
Fair
These brands are meeting the minimum sustainable efforts we'd expect from brands their size.
Poor
These are medium-to-large brands with fewer sustainability practices than we'd expect at their scale. These may also be small brands that lack public reporting on their sustainability goals or efforts.
Harmful
These brands are far from meeting the minimum sustainability efforts and reporting that we'd expect from them. Their business and manufacturing practices likely harm ecosystems and employees.
Our Criteria
Our criteria focus on the root causes of the climate crisis. Brands that excel in these areas are building more sustainable industries.
Materials
How is this brand using sustainable materials, packaging, sourcing, and shipping to reduce its impact?
Slow Consumption
Does this brand encourage conscious consumption and facilitate long-term product use?
Accountability
Is this brand transparent about its sustainability goals and how it's working toward them?
Our Methodology
We aim to empower people to get what they need by buying less and buying better. When we do need to buy things, we can use our dollars to support brands actively building more sustainable economic systems.
Transparency is crucial
Our approach is data-driven and expert-curated. Our team of carbon experts finds publicly available information to evaluate, summarize, and rate each brand.
Scaling expectations
We have higher expectations of big brands because they have a larger impact and resources to invest in more sustainable practices.
Evaluations are evolving
We may not always get it right. We welcome questions, feedback, or additional information. On each brand page, you can see the date each rating was last updated.
Our Impact
Our community is making real, measurable progress every day, tracking their sustainable spending journeys and earning rewards for climate-friendly purchases.
In 2023, 61% of people using Commons reduced their carbon emissions after joining the app
The average Commons user reduced their annual carbon footprint by 19%.
If every American reduced their annual emissions by 19%, we would save over 1 billion tons of CO₂e. That’s like taking 80% of cars off the road for a year.
FAQs
How does Commons make money?
How does Commons make money?
Brands are independently evaluated and rated by our carbon experts. When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. We evaluate each brand independently. Affiliate partnerships in no way influence our brand ratings or reviews.
When you purchase offsets for flights, gifts, or through Commons’ Climate Stewardship subscription, Commons charges a 20% transaction fee to cover the costs of our time-intensive evaluation and monitoring processes. This is standard for offset providers.
Who's behind Commons?
Who's behind Commons?
We’re a small team of carbon experts, data scientists, engineers, writers, and designers passionate about making sustainable living more accessible. Our Founder & CEO, Sanchali Pal, started tracking her carbon footprint in an Excel spreadsheet over 10 years ago because she couldn’t find any good tools to align her life with the world she wanted to live in. You can read more about us here.
Commons has raised $13.5 million in funding. Our investors include Sequoia Capital, climate investors Amasia and Norrsken, and the founders of Headspace, Fitbit, Candy Crush, and Nest. Commons has also received funding from public figures like Maisie Williams and Jay-Z’s Arrive. The company’s starting capital came from grants from Harvard and MIT.
Why are some brands unrated?
Why are some brands unrated?
Our small team manually evaluates brands, focusing first on the biggest, most popular brands, well-known sustainable options, and some smaller sustainable brands. We have hundreds more brands on our list.
If you see an unrated brand, you can click the 'Request' button to help bump this brand to the top of our to-do list.
Why do some brands have a partial review?
Why do some brands have a partial review?
When a brand doesn’t publish the minimum information required to achieve a “Fair” rating or higher, it receives a partial review.
Large brands must have reporting in these three categories for a full review:
- Material strategy
- Slow consumption or circularity initiatives
- Emissions measurement and reduction
Brands with no reporting or vague reporting receive partial reviews.
Currently, large brands are the only ones with partial reviews. Large brands have enough resources to account for and report on their emissions and sustainability efforts.
When they don’t, it’s due to negligence or because they’re owned by a parent company. Parent companies often report on all of their brands as a whole, so there’s not enough information on the rated brand’s specific emissions and sustainability efforts. In either case, we give large brands with partial reviews a “Harmful” rating.
How does Commons compare small brands to large brands?
How does Commons compare small brands to large brands?
Large brands have access to more money and resources to up their sustainability efforts, which is why we hold larger brands to a higher standard.
We define large brands as those that have five or more store fronts and/or are publicly listed.
All small brands receive a full review.
How does Commons use AI?
How does Commons use AI?
AI (artificial intelligence) has opened up vast possibilities for creating and computing, but it comes with a hefty environmental toll, so we don’t use it lightly.
We explored how AI might help our small team gather information for brand ratings, but the technology wasn’t accurate enough for our standards, so our reviews are done manually by the Commons team.
We currently only use AI to assist with more accurate search functionality. We use AI to collect brands’ product types and parse search terms to deliver more relevant search results. This is a standard approach in modern search tools.
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