Every product on ShopForTerra carries an eco-score from 1 to 10, and most carry eco-tags like "recycled," "organic," or "off-grid ready." This article explains what goes into that score, what doesn't, and the limits of a rating based on publicly available information rather than independent testing.
What the eco-score is designed to do
The score is a relative ranking meant to help you compare products within a category. It rewards products with lower environmental impact across the full life of the product, weighted toward the factors that most affect that impact. It is not a certification, not a third-party audit, and not a substitute for one. A score of 8 doesn't mean "independently verified sustainable" — it means "of the products we've looked at, this one rates above average on the criteria below."
The criteria behind the score
The score draws on five categories of publicly available information about the product and its brand.
Materials. What the product is made from and how much of it is recycled, biodegradable, organic, or low-impact. Products made from post-consumer recycled material or rapidly renewable inputs (bamboo, hemp) score higher than those made from virgin synthetic material.
Certifications. Whether the product or brand holds recognized third-party certifications — B-Corp, Fair Trade, USDA Organic, GOTS, FSC, and others. A product with a credible third-party certification scores better than an identical claim made by the brand itself, because certifications require independent verification. (We explain what each of these certifications actually requires in a separate article.)
Packaging. Whether the packaging is minimal, recyclable, or plastic-free. Packaging is a smaller contributor to total life-cycle impact than materials or use, but it's visible and often the most easily reduced, so it's included as a smaller-weight factor.
Durability and repairability. Products designed to last, be repaired, or be modular (replaceable batteries, parts availability) score higher than disposable or sealed-unit products. A product that lasts twice as long roughly halves its per-use impact.
Supply-chain transparency. What the brand publicly discloses about where and how its products are made. Brands that publish factory lists, audit summaries, or carbon disclosures score higher than those that don't.
The score is a composite of these factors, weighted more heavily toward materials and certifications than toward packaging.
What the rating does not capture
Being clear about limits is important, because a single number can falsely imply certainty.
- The score reflects available public information, not independent lab testing. We do not send products to a lab or audit factories. If a brand makes a claim we cannot verify, the score reflects the claim's credibility based on the source (a certification carries more weight than a marketing statement) but not the underlying truth.
- It does not capture the full life-cycle carbon footprint. A true life-cycle analysis requires detailed accounting of manufacturing, transport, and use-phase emissions that are rarely public. Our score is a proxy based on the factors most correlated with lower impact, not a measured carbon total.
- It weights what's measurable, which isn't always what matters most. Some genuinely important impacts — a brand's political lobbying, labor practices beyond its first-tier suppliers — are hard to capture in a public-information score and are under-weighted as a result.
- Scores are relative within our catalog. A score of 9 here means "strong against the criteria above and against our other products," not "as sustainable as theoretically possible."
How to use the score
Treat the eco-score and eco-tags as a starting point for your own judgment, not a final verdict. The tags make the reasoning more transparent: a product tagged "recycled" and "fair-trade" tells you which criteria contributed, so you can decide whether the factors you care about are the ones being rewarded. If a certification matters to you, look for it by name; if repairability matters more than organic certification, weight that yourself when comparing two products with similar scores.
We re-score products when we learn more about a brand or when certifications change. If a product's score seems wrong to you and you have better information, that's the kind of feedback we use to correct ratings.