By guest blogger Delphine Gibassier, Toulouse Business School
Green consumer audits started out with two campaigning journals (the New
Consumer and the Ethical Consumer) mentioned by Gray et al. (1996). At the
time, there was a relative assessment of the performance of corporations made
via publically available information. Clearly targeted at the general public,
those ratings were the first visible “consumer shadow accounts”. Today,
corporate information is more readily accessible, through sustainable reports
and websites, and multiple media channels that investigate corporate practices.
The new frontier of the consumer “lobby” movement is now targeted to products.
Many government-led and privately-led initiatives have started to look beyond
eco-labels to try and input environmental accounting directly on the products.
Tesco, Casino, Leclerc, and the Sustainability Consortium are examples of
privately led initiatives (A recent and smaller initiative is the one of the
French company “Bureau Vallée” which rates their office consumer goods with
A/B/C/D in their shops). Publically led initiatives include the French
experiment “Affichage Environnemental” and the currently in process “PEF” at
the European Union level (Product Environmental Footprint).
A new way of empowering consumers with shadow environmental and social
accounts is now being processed via external consultancies and their in-house
developed applications. A few months ago, I downloaded on my phone the
application « Noteo » (application for products notation in France).
As both a researcher and a mom of three, I got teased by this application and
the easiness of looking at the social and environmental (and health) impacts of
products I was intending to buy while shopping.
I have got to say, I never really used it while shopping, first because
shopping was a run-run time, and also because we opted out of shopping in
person when our third little man entered our life this Summer (Noteo does not
work on “drive” websites ;-)). However, I did test out Noteo at home (easy) and
also tested the application’s possibility to give in new products that aren’t
in.
As a consumer (or “consom’actor” like we say in France), I like the
easiness of use and the possibility to interact by acting myself as an enhancer
of the application for others (by suggesting products to be added).
I also like the way you can choose what’s most important to you (for
example health before the environment, or social..), and also how you can also
look at alternatives that are better graded then the one that you are about to
choose.
Maybe because my “researcher mind” got the most of me, I however quickly
asked myself:
-
how the
grades were given, and what was really behind them:
-
how could
then so quickly invest in ten of thousands of products’ grading when companies
like Tesco opted out of labelling their thousands of products, it took five
years to Danone to go through only a few thousands and other companies like
Akzo Nobel only talk about having looked at hundreds of products..
-
and why we
couldn’t see more one or two “reasons” behind the grades (such as for health,
there are 10 products considered dangerous, but only 2 names are given)… not
good for transparency (of Noteo)
-
and why
there are no more explanations behind the “dangerous” elements (can’t click,
can’t see what’s the science behind etc…)
Noteo claims that products are evaluated against 400 criteria (the
website says it took five years of work before opening the application with 45,000 products available) and that it uses “IT algorithms” to aggregate raw data,
before comparing products between them. The methodology is explained on their
website http://www.noteo.info/la-notation/une-methodologie-fiable/, and appeals to scientific wording and
describes a very impressive process of scientific rigour to impress the users
and generate trust. It makes me think of the “Green Rankings” of Newsweek… Is
the grading more “objective” if giving the impression of being ultra complex? Of
course, Noteo is also not exempt from criticism on its business model (where
the money comes from… the association has a business cousin that gets money
from using their data, for example, to “help” companies make better products).
Clearly, although I like the “quick & easy” nature of the solution, the
transparency of the methodology and of results are not there… As a consumer I
got quickly frustrated. As the Journalist Sophie Caillat suggests in her article in 2012[1],
it is easy to try and look for the “perfect” product that does not exist… or resist to change by “habit”.
I also heard recently about other apps in other countries to become an
“aware” shopper such as EarthTouch and GoodGuide (with whom Noteo says it is in
contact).
EarthTouch tells us on its website that the “The Universal Ecolabel®
provides an accounting method (Earth Accounting®) for monitoring the finite
planetary resources used by humanity in a manner not possible with the current
financial accounting system.” The universal ecolabel is described on their
website http://earthaccounting.com/ecolabel.html, also no information is given on how this
methodology was designed, and where the numbers come from.
GoodGuide say they combine product and company level information to
characterize a product's health, environmental and
social impacts. They also describe their own methodology on http://www.goodguide.com/about/ratings
and explain what composes the ratings.
|
Good Guide
|
Earth Touch
|
Noteo
|
|
250 000 products
|
Not available yet
|
60 000 products
|
|
Social, Health, Environment
|
Social, Human, Environment, Animal, Manufacture, Use, Post-Use
|
Social, Health, Environment, Economic
|
|
American
|
American
|
French
|
|
Founded at Berkeley
|
Founded by a doctor
|
Former CSR consultant
|
|
Looks at company information
|
Looks at existing eco-labels
|
|
|
Proposes alternatives
|
n/a
|
Proposes alternatives
|
As SEA tools and methodologies have the “power” to make some things
visible and others invisible for corporations, what about social and
environmental accountings for consumers?
What about what is being told with
those applications to the consumer? And back to the supply chain?
What about the “industrialisation” of product accounting? (see also Greenext,
the Casino and Leclerc tentatives in France…)
What’s the link (or non-link) with environmental labelling experiments
ongoing in France, EU and the work done at the Sustainability Consortium?
So what should we make of “social and environmental accountings” behind
those gradings to “empower” shoppers to be come “smart” shoppers? Have you used
them?
Are the ratings impaired by the same problem the early ones had in the
90s, that is, is corporate management still reluctant to acknowledge
accountability and supply information to them on each and every product (Gray
et al. 1996)?
This article on What Is Shadow Accounting In Insurance Companies is also helpful. Thanks for this.
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