Ekko Score helps everyone more easily understand what & how they consume. While we may not be able to change the way people choose to live their lives, we believe that given the opportunity to better understand what a product is really made of, most people will make better choices.
Consuming is woven into the very fabric of our being in most first world countries. Happiness, generosity and success in western society is defined by consumption. Our ability to consume is one of the key ways we measure status and success in both ourselves and others. (If you don't believe me, think for a minute about the way we describe success in celebrities and what we aspire to - their money, cars, influence, houses, yachts.) Consumption is in our DNA. It drives our economies. Literally. GDP is a measure of how much more we have tomorrow compared to today. If you live in a western country you were literally trained from birth to want more.
Knowing more about the eco credentials of the products we buy helps both consumers and vendors to easily make more eco choices, to minimise exploitation of others, maximise support of good and to understand the trade offs that our seemingly simple decisions might require.
Ekko Score seems to be taking forever to roll out and one of the key reasons is that the more we work on Ekko Score, the more we realise that pretty much everything is greenwashed at some level. We are finding that products we thought were great, perhaps aren't so much and others we thought were terrible, perhaps aren't so much.The truth is that we all impact the planet in some way - it's just that different people find different impacts more acceptable. So we've found a way, through an algorithm and using data that is already available, to help you to make the best decision you can, for your lifestyle.
CONSUMERS AND TRADERS CAN NOW BE WAY MORE AWARE OF WHAT THEY TRADE OFF. ORGANIC PRODUCTS MIGHT BE ANIMAL BASED. VEGAN PRODUCTS MIGHT CONTAIN PALM OIL. YOUR FAV 100% NATURAL HAND CREAM MIGHT BE PACKAGED IN RECYCLED PLASTIC. The point of Ekko Score is to simply show a score by each standard to allow you to make an informed decision that aligns with your values; be they organic, vegan, palm oil free, handmade or local.
The eco credentials of most consumer products that exist have been verified or claimed in some manner. Using appropriate technology, these verifications or claims can be accessed, aggregated and passed through an algorithm to give a ‘best knowledge’ eco score to any product. We worked with computer scientists at RMIT to rank and weight certifications to create the Ekko Score. This is how, by declaring your product's certifications, your product achieves an 'eco footprint score' against each standard and an overall score.
We are using machine learning (Artificial Intelligence) to train the Ekko Score model and over time, we will be able to automatically score products and save Traders a lot of time, as well as providing them with information about options related to sourcing for even better products.If you have any questions, feedback, comments or alternative views, please comment on this page or Contact Us. We'd love to hear from you.