You are in a store, considering what to buy and you see a claim on a product – maybe your cleaning product bears the Green Seal label, or a claim on the carton says the eggs are “Animal Welfare Approved.” What’s it mean? Is it backed up by good standards? Can you trust it? Pull out your iPhone and check it out on Label Lookup. We’ve researched roughly 200 different claims that can be found on product labels and gathered what we learned into this app (and a web site: smarterliving.nrdc.org/labels) so that you can make informed product choices.

We’ve even rated the claims, using a 0-4 “leaf rating” scheme, so that you can more easily sort the ones you can trust from the ones that are least reliable.

How our rating works

A claim is rated based on whether and how it meets the following conditions:
•It addresses multiple issues, such as its impact on the environment, health, worker safety, etc, or just one.
•It is based on meaningful standards that are consistent and clear among different products.
•The organization behind it makes available to the public information about organizational structure, funding, oversight bodies and the standards upon which the claim is being made.
•The certification standards upon which it is based are developed via an open and consensus based process, meaning there was multi-stakeholder input.
•It is verified by an independent third party, meaning the organization deciding who can use a label or claim has no ties to or receive funds beyond fees for certification from the sale of certified products.

4 leaves is the highest rating, 0 is the lowest and means the label has no meaning and is not reliable.

We don’t claim this rating scheme is perfect. Without an oversight organization that establishes standards for the use of claims, there is wide variability across and within product categories. There is also imperfect information about all the claims in our database. But we dug deeply with the help of two terrific online databases – EcoLabel Index and Greener Choices – and a number of government web sites as well as other web resources, and pulled together the most reliable, objective information we could find on each label.

The research for this app was performed by the Smarter Living team at NRDC. We develop education and engagement tools for consumers. Visit us on the web at smarterliving.nrdc.org. The app belongs to SmarterTools and the newest version was developed by Scott Santulli and designed by Angela Pan.

We hope you find this app useful—please let us know what you think about it and any improvements that can be included in future versions. Send us an email at smarterliving@nrdc.org.