Good On You’s ratings are comprehensive, considering impacts across the three key pillars: planet, people, and animals; and throughout the entire supply chain, from raw materials to a product’s end of use. Transparency is central to the methodology, meaning brands are assessed only on publicly available information. This article offers an overview of the process, including how and when we select brands, and the steps involved in analysis.
How Good On You determines brands to rate
Good On You rates consumer-facing brands to help inform consumers and businesses in decision-making about the brands they engage with. There are currently over 7,000 brands rated by Good On You across fashion, beauty, services, and retailer industry verticals.
Rating requests
Anyone can request a brand to be rated through the contact form on the Good On You website or the Good On You app. Brands often reach out to us directly to request a rating. The companies that use Good On You ratings data to drive their sustainability initiatives also typically request that we rate their portfolio of brands, or those that are most relevant for their consumer audience.
These requests form a very long queue of brands to be rated, along with updating existing ratings. We are continuously assessing the queue to prioritise the ratings that are most critical to Good On You's mission with the capacity we have to complete robust analysis.
Keeping brand ratings updated
Ratings are reviewed regularly. Our goal is to review large brands annually and smaller brands every 18 months. In addition, more frequent reviews are initiated when there is a significant change in a brand’s public disclosure or significant concern from the public or stakeholders about changes in the brand’s practices.
Ratings can fall out of these target update frequencies as capacity is prioritised towards the ratings that best serve Good On You's vision and mission. Those ratings typically remain published as they are considered accurate at the rating date, which is published with the rating, and still provide some utility for businesses and consumer use cases. Some ratings are unpublished when it becomes apparent that the rating information is fundamentally incorrect and there is not sufficient capacity to update the rating.
The rating process
The Good On You rating system assesses how well a brand performs on each issue in our methodology using one or more data sources, including relevant, specific information published by brands and their parent companies, certification schemes, multi-stakeholder initiatives, and independent public data sources.
In all cases, each data point must be supported by robust evidence in the public domain. Where data is based on a public statement by the brand, it must be specific and precise (ie provide information about the practice in detail), and material (ie relevant to the sustainability practice under consideration). Statements that are vague or not relevant to a brand’s impact on people, the planet, and animals are ignored. Statements of intention about future action are only relevant to the small number of issues related to setting targets.
Steps in the Good On You rating system:
Identify brands to rate. Priority is given to brands with the largest market share, brands that are likely to rate highly, brands that cater for diversity, and those requested by partner retailers and Good On You users.
Determine the vertical and brand size.
A ratings analyst collates relevant data from brand disclosures, third-party data sources, brand data submission via Good Measures, and some data scraping and automated data collection.
The analyst assesses the brand's publicly available data against the methodology—a structured set of question-and-answer options across the three key pillars (people, planet, animals).
Another analyst conducts a peer review of the assessment with particular attention to reviewing data where interpretation of available data is required.
The rating is finalised and scored on a completed set of methodology data.
Create a text summary of each brand’s rating.
Collect supporting brand data, including location, contact details, price range, product types, styles, images, and retailers.
Publish final brand listings to the Good On You mobile app, online directory, and industry tools.
Ratings technology
Proprietary and third-party software is utilised to facilitate an efficient ratings process, to enable standardisation and decrease the risk of procedural and analysis errors. This includes software to manage the ratings process and maintain data integrity, and a software platform that powers the Good On You ratings analysts’ process of evaluating brand disclosures against the methodology.
Various supporting tools use scraping and AI technologies to aid the analyst process of collating vast amounts of information and evaluating it against the methodology.
Ratings methodology
See detailed breakdowns of what is assessed in the methodology
Good On You uses proprietary tech to evaluate brands solely on publicly available information, which promotes transparency and empowers better consumer and business choices. The methodology assesses up to 1,000 data points across 100 key issues. Data sources include credible certifications, standards, third-party assessments, and brands’ own reporting.
Each issue and indicator is weighted based on its materiality and relevance to the brand's sector and products. And the overall rating is based on brands’ scores across the key pillars (people, planet, animals), which are weighted equally. For example, if a brand doesn’t make products that typically use animal-derived materials, then that brand won’t be rated on the animals pillar and its overall score will be based on its people and planet scores, which will be equally weighted.
Methodology structure
Each vertical (fashion, beauty, services, retailer) is a separate methodology but assessments of certain issues may be common between the vertical methodologies.
Methodology hierarchy is broken down as follows:
Pillars > areas > issues > questions > question options (QO)
Pillars and areas are the same for both large and small brands within a vertical
Issues, questions, and question options for small brand assessments are mostly a subset of the methodology for large brands.
Conditionality and prerequisites: Each brand is rated on a subset of relevant questions
Not all questions need to or can be answered for every brand, since some are only relevant to certain businesses and operations. We navigate this in two ways:
Brand size: Assessment for a large brand starts with the full question set, while a small brand starts with about 30% less questions in the methodology
Brand characteristics: Some questions are disabled until an answer to another question is selected. In other words, they are conditional on prior answers. This can be due to:
Relevance: if a brand doesn’t sell synthetics, we don’t need to ask about microplastics
Redundancy: if a brand has a CDP score, we don’t need to ask some climate questions
Analysis depth: if a brand doesn’t have a Code of Conduct, we don’t ask about Code of Conduct details
Fashion conditionality >>
Beauty conditionality >>
Services conditionality >>
Multi-brand retailer conditionality >>
Core criteria
"Core criteria" is an initial assessment of practices across all three pillars: people, planet, and animals. Brands are assessed on 30+ of the most critical issues in their supply chain. Brands that do not demonstrate meaningful action on these issues are, as a result, not assessed on their other sustainability claims or initiatives and cannot receive a rating higher than "Not Good Enough" for that pillar.
Core criteria is currently implemented in fashion methodologies and will be expanded to other verticals in due course. Below is a summary of the issues considered most critical in the fashion core criteria.
Planet
Uses lower impact materials in its products
Avoids a fast fashion business model
Adopts slow, circular principles and initiatives
Addresses climate impacts
Sets science-based targets for emissions reduction (large brands)
Avoids or minimises hazardous chemicals in production
Minimises the environmental impact of packaging
Adopts relevant certifications
People
Has a supplier Code of Conduct
Audits suppliers
Publishes a supplier list
Commits to improving wages in the supply chain
Produces in lower- or medium-risk countries
Has a diversity and inclusion policy
Supports workers’ livelihoods
Has a grievance mechanism
Adopts relevant certifications
Animals
Has an animal welfare policy
Avoids use of wild or high-risk animal-derived materials
Avoids mulesing in wool supply
Adopts relevant certifications
No info
Where the rating analysis determines that a brand has insufficient disclosure on a certain part of the methodology, the analyst may determine a section of the questionnaire as having “no info”. When an analyst selects “no info” at the pillar, area or issue level, all of the questions within that section default to a score of zero.
Some brands publish virtually no relevant sustainability information. They are marked as “no info” for all three pillars and score zero, with an overall “We Avoid” rating label. A brand that is assessed as “no info” on two pillars will typically be marked “no info” on the third pillar because any information on the third pillar is determined to be insignificant in the sustainability of a brand that is not addressing any issues across the other areas of its business.