METHODOLOGY

It’s no secret.

We’re here to help get rid of greenwashing.

Brands use many different terms and keywords to signal that their products are in one way or another sustainable, ethical and/or environmentally friendly. Sometimes these claims are accurate portrayals of good-faith and highly-effective efforts, but sometimes they’re straight mumbo-jumbo. There’s a pretty good chance you’ve found yourself on the receiving end of this nonsense more than once, and for even the smartest among us, it can be more than just a little confusing.

At Live By, we’re digging into these claims, and because we’ve done oodles of research for you, we know exactly what we’re looking for: verifiable claims of efforts that correspond with actually improved environmental, ethical or health outcomes.

Our methods are inspired by our own, personal frustrations. As we began to see more and more greenwashing in the marketplace, we knew it was time to take action, because all of that endless noise can hamper even the most well-meaning attempts at being conscious consumers and responsible global citizens.

We know that it’s not just a simple challenge to distinguish the truth from the buzz. It’s often downright exhausting or even impossible (without doing hours of scholarly research, that is).

So we set out to determine which values, causes, and issues have a proven impact on the environment, and which function solely as marketing mechanisms. As we identify efforts that make a real difference, we apply an urgency-based weighting to these quantifiers, which in turn inform our algorithm.

The output of all of this data-science wizardry is our Ethical Authority Score (EAS), a powerful (and dare we say it… revolutionary) scoring system which provides a real-world reflection of a brand’s sustainability efforts.

Awesome, right? We think so.

But what does it all mean in practice?

In a nutshell, the Live By scoring system allows you to find the things you want to buy, categorized by the causes that matter most to you and ranked by their overall positive impact on people, animals, and planet.

You may know exactly which causes you feel most passionately about– if so, we’ve got you covered. And if you don’t? No worries – we’ve got your back here too. You can read more about our causes here, what they are, and why us humans should care about them.

The power of our algorithm is in informing choices for better outcomes.

Because here’s the big, beautiful truth: When you buy better, you vote.

YES. You heard that right.

Every dollar you spend is a vote cast out into the cosmos of the market. And brands, investors and manufacturers are listening. Their job is to deliver products that we consumers demand. If we demand inexpensive, easy and plentiful (at any cost), we get mountains of cheap stuff that creates countless negative environmental, labor and animal-rights problems.

BUT, if we demand ethically and sustainably made products, we get a big, beautiful web of companies working side-by-side to create a more compassionate, regenerative and fair world.

I bet you didn’t know your shampoo was so powerful.

It is. And so are you.