Ecoscale Mk II: Designing a metric for change

Ecoscale as a visual metric on a green background
ECOSCALE MK II

A Compliance System Built by Scientists & Powered by Consumers 

Amidst growing public demand for tighter and more transparent levels of regulation around environmental impact of business activities, we would like to point out that there are no laws around setting standards ABOVE current regulations. We don’t have to wait for governments, technically we can start right away… So, let’s do that.

  • Transparency for Consumers

    A clear simple visual tool compressing complex research data into an easy to understand format while identifying businesses that choose accountability before profitability and transparency over greenwashing.

  • Inform Businesses of their Potential Impacts.

    Helps businesses to better understand the potential impacts of their product and through our Crowd Source Supply Solutions Database will be able to provide guidance on lower impact alternatives.

  • Protection for our Environment

    Accessing databases & cooperating with scientists to adapt new research without the delay of legislation. Enforced not by regulators but by consumer support for businesses that are trying to drive change.

For those who aren’t familiar with Ecogreen’s Ecoscale Mk I – it is a concept we developed for our own products by reviewing toxicology studies of the ingredients, their origins as well as assessing the impact of packaging. The driver for the creation of the notion was simple…

If we are not prepared to acknowledge the consequences of today’s actions, how can we expect to do better tomorrow?

It’s not that every business is doing the wrong thing on purpose, some might not even realise it. When we ran our own products under the Ecoscale microscope we were shocked by some results and ended up discontinuing 1 product and actively promote restrained use of another. Yet, these same products under current regulations are considered “cool and normal” (to quote a favourite Content Creator of ours). 

Consumers receive limited or no warnings and only a vague impact classification for the business. In many cases this classification can be avoided by simply reducing the concentration of a compound by as little as 0.01%, not that this makes any difference to the coral or fish.

What we propose is a voluntary standard, a companion to regulations not a replacement. An agile system that allows us to adapt faster, that works in tandem with our world’s scientists, pooling research to feed impact data without the lag time for regulation. Detailed enough at one end to allow businesses to make informed decisions, yet simplified as a visual scale on the other end for consumers to understand – essentially an evolved version of our Ecoscale both in the visual consumer end and the detailed backend we built it from.

Obviously this would be a “voluntary standard” and cannot be enforced legally. We have enough trust in consumers to support the products & businesses that adopt it. After all, businesses care more about losing market share than they do fines and penalties. Everything we need is there, we just need to start building the network and coordinating the program, as always check out CSS to see our next step and what we need to keep moving ahead.

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