Brand Sustainability Ratings Explained

Last reviewed: 11 December 2025

Since 2017, Sustainable Jungle (SJ) has helped conscious consumers cut through noise and greenwashing. Our brand sustainability ratings provide a clear, independent signal of a company’s progress on people, planet, and governance – plain-English, comparable, and useful. Unlike other sustainability rating systems, we focus exclusively on consumer brands, making our sustainability assessments directly relevant to your shopping decisions.

What we stand for:

• Independent & consumer-first: Built for shoppers who want trustworthy signals.
• Progress over perfection: We rate brands that are genuinely on the journey; we don’t platform destructive actors.
• Transparency: Clear criteria, documented process, and public methodology.
• Consistency: One framework applied across categories, benchmarked within each category.

Read more about us and our team.

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Brand sustainability ratings are independent assessments that evaluate how well companies perform on environmental and social criteria. These ratings help consumers make informed choices by providing a third-party evaluation of a brand’s sustainability practices and certifications.

While various sustainability rating systems exist (from B Corp certification to Good On You’s fashion ratings), Sustainable Jungle’s approach is designed specifically for conscious consumers seeking trustworthy signals across multiple product categories. Our brand ratings assess sustainability performance based on 22 criteria across nature & animals, communities & wellbeing, business governance, and product performance. We use publicly available information, certifications, and brand-provided disclosures and documentation.

How Our Sustainability Ratings Compare To Other Brand Ratings Or Certifications

Choosing how to evaluate a brand’s sustainability credentials can be confusing. While we deeply respect organizations like B Corp, Good On You, and Climate Neutral, our approach serves a different purpose for conscious consumers. Here’s how we differ:

• B Corp Certification is the gold standard for businesses committed to stakeholder governance and comprehensive impact. The certification process takes 12-18 months, requires legal changes to company structure, and costs thousands of dollars. B Corp is ideal for brands making deep, long-term commitments across all business operations. Our sustainability ratings, by contrast, focus specifically on environmental and social performance that matters to consumers, with a 2-3 week turnaround once documentation is submitted.
• Good On You provides excellent ratings specifically for fashion and beauty brands, diving deep into industry-specific issues like textile waste, microplastics, and fair wages for garment workers. We love their work and often reference their ratings. Where we differ is breadth: we assess brands across multiple product categories (from home goods to food) using a broader set of 22 criteria, though we don’t go as deep on fashion-specific nuances.
• Climate Neutral and similar single-issue certifications (like Fair Trade, Leaping Bunny, or GOTS) verify specific claims—carbon neutrality, fair labor, no animal testing, or organic textiles. These are valuable badges that feed into our overall assessment, but they only tell part of a brand’s story.

Our brand ratings aim to provide a holistic view across categories, making it easier for consumers to compare brands in the same product space—whether that’s cleaning supplies, pet products, or outdoor gear. Additionally, our brand rating system is accessible and more affordable for smaller sustainable brands.

Our brand ratings assess against a standardized sustainability framework across four elements, then benchmark results within their product category. The four sustainability rating elements are as follows:

1. Nature & Animals: Evaluates a brand’s impact on the natural environment and on animals more broadly. This includes resource use and management, climate action and animal welfare.
2. Communities & Wellbeing: Evaluates a brand’s impact on their employees, suppliers, customers and the communities in which they operate. This includes treatment of people in the supply chain, health & safety, diversity, equity and inclusion.
3. Business Values & Governance: Evaluates a brand’s overall mission, value set and transparency. This includes consideration of company size and ownership, responsible marketing and communications, public disclosures and approach to giving.
4. Product Performance: Evaluates a brand’s ability to meet customers’ functional needs. The premise is that sustainable and ethical products need to meet or exceed conventional standards in terms of performance & durability (where relevant).

The key outcome of the brand sustainability assessment is an ‘Overall Rating’ (see more on this below).

A rated brand will be awarded one of 5 sustainability ratings based on a scale of performance relative to peers in the same product category.

A brand’s percentage score is calculated from our criteria. Their Overall Rating reflects how that score compares to the top-rated brand in the relevant hero product category. This contextualizes performance by industry maturity.

Brand Rating Methodology:

• Each of the 22 criteria is scored 0–3 (0 = no evidence; 3 = leading practice that’s difficult to achieve).
• Non-applicable criteria are removed (e.g., a 100% vegan brand is not scored on animal testing).
• Bonus points may be awarded for clear, groundbreaking outcomes (not claims).
• Scores roll up to a percentage and then to an Overall Rating via category benchmarking.

Evidence standards

• Disclosure = the brand publicly shares policies, targets, and progress.
• Demonstrated performance = outcomes are visible and attributable (preferably verified by a reputable third party).
• We do not conduct formal audits. Where ambiguity exists, we default to what is publicly evidenced.
• Our methodology is reviewed periodically with input from practitioners and evolves as standards improve.

Our Brand Rating Criteria:

The full list and high level descriptions of each of our brand rating criteria is as follows:

Nature & Animals

• Sustainable Materials: Materials are sourced from sustainably managed, renewable or recycled sources.
• Water Use & Management: Considered water use from production (including wastewater). Tracked, measured and ongoing efforts to improve.
• Biodiversity & Deforestation: Limits impact on biodiversity and deforestation from raw materials and inputs. Tracked, measured and ongoing efforts to improve.
• Chemical use & Management: No hazardous chemical use and limits impact of other chemical use. Tracked, measured and ongoing efforts to improve.
• Packaging: Packaging & shipping materials are reduced and made from recycled or renewable sources. Easily recycled or composted at the end of life.
• Waste & pollution: Robust policy or approach to limit or reduce waste created during business operations from production to sale. Tracked, measured and ongoing efforts to improve.
• Circularity & Business Model: Robust policy or approach to product circularity, linear consumptive models and end of life. Limited or no products go to landfill at end of life.
• Climate Change: Carbon reduction targets in place and actions taken to reduce emissions (includes renewable energy).
• Energy Efficiency: Robust policy/approach to reducing energy use during business operations from production to sale (excludes renewable energy). Tracked, measured and ongoing efforts to improve.
• Animal Welfare: If animal derived products or ingredients are used, robust policies and assurances in place to ensure animal welfare (excludes animal testing).
• Animal Testing: No animal testing throughout production.

Communities & Wellbeing

• Workforce: Fair employment terms, safe working conditions and reasonable benefits for employees.
• Human Rights & Modern Slavery In The Supply Chain: Ethical and fair treatment of people throughout the supply chain. No slavery or child labor.
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Supports diversity, equity and inclusion in ownership, hiring, people management, product design, branding, marketing and community.
• Health & Safety: Safe products and services. Includes digital rights and privacy considerations.
• Local or small business sourcing/support: Sourcing raw materials and/or production from local, small, underserved or individual makers with the goal of supporting & uplifting small businesses and communities.

Business Values & Governance

• Business Size & Ownership: Transparent ownership by parties with irreproachable ethical standards. Brands who are bigger and better funded have more of a responsibility to drive sustainability outcomes.
• Transparency & Ethics: Provides disclosure to a broad range of stakeholders about ethics, sustainability impacts and performance.
• Responsible Marketing & Communication: Marketing of products and/or services (and any other external communication) is done responsibly without misleading or misrepresenting sustainability attributes (greenwashing) or doing harm.
• Giving: Brand gives time, in-kind contributions or money to charitable causes or community initiatives.

Product Performance

• Performance: High quality products perform as well or better than less sustainable alternatives.
• Designed To Last: Durable/non-consumable products are designed to last and are repairable to extend their useful life.

Data Sources

We prioritize public, verifiable information and supplement with stakeholder input:

Primary (public)

• Brand websites and sustainability reports
• Third-party audits, certifications, indices
• Public reviews and commentary (e.g., forums, reputable review sites)

Supplementary

• Information provided via brand application and follow-ups
• Any product feedback submitted by readers (lived experience)

We encourage brands to make any information they share with us publicly available to support transparency.

• Paying a fee does not influence outcomes. Fees cover the cost of research, analysis, publication, and annual refresh.
• We do not sell guaranteed ratings, sponsored ratings, or paid “placements” within the scoring process.
• We do not rate brands engaged in destructive practices or repeated greenwashing.
• We accept consumer brands that can demonstrate meaningful action toward better social and environmental outcomes. We will decline applications where claims are unsubstantiated or practices conflict with our standards.

Fees & Renewals (Transparency)

• Fees cover research, analysis, and publication.
• Pricing is aligned to brand revenue to keep access fair.

• Brands with an active brand rating may display a “Rated by Sustainable Jungle” badge on owned channels in line with our Brand Rating Guidelines (we’ll provide files and usage rules).
• Your dedicated brand rating page and SJ Brand Directory listing remain live while your rating is active. If you do not renew, the listing and badge license are removed.

What Our Brand Rating & Review System Is

• Independent, standardized, and comparable across categories
• Consumer-friendly: plain English, not jargon
• Selective: focused on brands genuinely doing better
• Transparent: clear criteria and method, publicly explained

What Our Brand Rating & Review System Is Not

• An audit or assurance engagement
• A pass/fail “gotcha” for bad actors (we don’t feature them)
• A measurement of every scope-3 nuance (we reward disclosure and meaningful progress)
• Perfectly “objective”: expert judgment is applied, guided by published criteria

We treat non-public information brand’s share with care and only publish what is necessary to substantiate ratings. Sensitive documents can be reviewed off-the-record; where possible, we’ll ask brand’s to publish summaries for transparency.

Learn more about the process to get rated → How To Get Rated

If you’re ready to get your brand rated → Application Form

Reach out to us at [email protected]