The BuyGreen.com Standard

With all the talk about Green, Ecological, Environmentally-Friendly, Sustainable, Renewable, Recyclable, Earth-Friendly, Fair-Trade, Waste-Reducing and Organic labeled products, how can we tell what’s really green? As we are approaching Earth Day 2009 (Wednesday, April 22), I thought it would be timely to address the question.

And, here’s a fantastic resource for that: BuyGreen.com has become a trusted source for green products. Allison Huke and a partner started the company a couple years ago when she found it difficult to find all the green products that she needed and trusted for her family and her home. She certainly solved that problem! BuyGreen features over 1000 eco-friendly products to address almost any consumer’s needs.

What I particularly appreciate about this online store is their proprietary BuyGreen standard. This standard evaluates each product in the store to help customers understand how it performs with respect to its environmental impact. The standard analyzes four areas for every single product and rates it accordingly. It circles all considerations that would qualify the green-ness of any given product. The Source Material criterion examines the presence of toxins and the provenance of raw materials. The Manufacturing criterion looks at animal testing, resource & energy consumption, pollution and packaging. The Usage criteria evaluate how the product usage will affect the environment (e.g. reusable water bottles). The Disposal criterion examines whether the product is biodegradable, recyclable, etc… These four criteria provide a rating for each product, to let us know where it falls on the green scale. This rating appears as an icon by each product’s description. Very helpful.

BuyGreen sells normally hard-to-find products like biodegradable disposable cups, plates and utensils. There are biodegradable straws too. And then the biodegradable waste bags. Or the biodegradable and recycled packing supplies, perfect for small businesses. I love that I can find all that, and green cleaning supplies and personal care items in one place. Allison and team did a terrific job at judiciously selecting everything in their store and I think that they have definitely attained their mission which states “Our mission at BuyGreen is to become your most trusted source for green products, offering the widest variety of quality products, the best information for consumers, and the most enjoyable shopping experience”.  Yes indeed.

Earth Day, we are ready.