The idea of a green star rating is to assign a score, on a scale of 1-5 green stars, to rate a product or business for ethics. So the review that goes with the green star rating should include some discussion of the social or environmental impact of that product or business. You can choose the criteria that are most important to you (e.g., climate change, animal welfare, equality, etc.) to arrive at your green star score.
Please consider incorporating a green star rating next time you review something! Post the review on any site that you normally use – e.g., Yelp, TripAdvisor or Google Maps for a restaurant or other local business, or an online retailer like Amazon for a product. Contact me if you do, as there’s a recurring competition to encourage readers to write ethical reviews – you can win an ethical prize and be featured on this site!
To help you do this, these posts take a look at the content and structure of some example green star reviews. You can post an ethical consumerism review on any site using this format. But feel free to use whatever format makes sense to you, as long as you award a green star rating and explain your reasoning a little bit.
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A common issue that people raise is that they are not sure where to start when it comes to writing an ethical review. Perhaps you would like to join in, but the process of deciding on an ethical rating seems overwhelming? Well, look no further, because informing this process is one of the main priorities … Continue reading How to decide on an ethical rating: Cafés
Greetings! In the next post, I’ll run another competition to encourage you, dear readers, to write a Green Stars review, so please stay tuned for that. In the meantime, I want to take another look at the ethical consumerism criteria that can go into a Green Stars rating. Evaluating the ethics of a product or … Continue reading Ethical Consumerism, Part 10 – Green Stars rating criteria
I think it’s worth writing a post to explain why I took the direction of user-generated ratings with the Green Stars Project. There’s a pretty good chance that you take advantage of user-generated content on a regular basis. Perhaps you were just looking up the difference between herons and cranes on Wikipedia, and then went … Continue reading Ethical Consumerism, Part 5: Why we need User-Generated Ratings.
Earlier in the year, I wrote a post about cell phones that covered a few social and environmental issues, from repairability and longevity to sourcing of (conflict) minerals. I said I would post an update once I chose a new phone and wrote a Green Stars review, and so, here I am! Based on the … Continue reading Ethical Cell Phone Update: LG Review
Here’s another example of how to incorporate both gold star and green star ratings (you can see more examples here). Converse shoes can be recycled Often, while researching a product to write a review, I’ll come across new information that may change my behavior in some way. In this case, I wasn’t aware of the … Continue reading Converse Chuck Taylor High Tops
Here’s another review that serves as an example of how to incorporate both gold star and green star ratings (you can see more examples here). In this case the product is made by one of the largest corporations on the planet, which provides some challenges when it comes to evaluating the product and company (more … Continue reading Nestlé Kit Kat Matcha Review
Here’s another example of a green star review. You can see more examples posted on the home page and also collected together here. Like all our example reviews, it’s not an endorsement or ad for the product and we receive no revenue from this site. The product is a felt laptop sleeve made from recycled … Continue reading Recycled PET laptop sleeve review
Here’s another review that serves as an example of how to incorporate both gold star and green star ratings. You can see more examples here. The review below is picked somewhat randomly and, like all our example reviews, it’s not an endorsement or an ad for the product. Below the review there’s some more detail … Continue reading Nutiva refined coconut oil review
