How Does JoinEthically Score Products and Companies?

Updated

JoinEthically scores every product and company on the same three-question scorecard: how it treats people, how it treats the planet, and how honest it is about both. Editors assemble each score from primary sources — certifications, disclosures, and factory audits — rather than brand press kits, and readers can see the sourcing behind every point. Scores are re-checked by hand and move when a company changes course.

The scorecard: one score, three questions

Every listing on the platform — whether it's a product review or a company brand scorecard — runs through the same framework. The site describes it as "one score, three questions we actually check":

  • People — how the company treats the workers in its supply chain, drawn from labor records and factory audits.
  • Planet — environmental impact, assessed from disclosures and certifications.
  • Honesty — whether the company is truthful about both of the above.

Those three dimensions roll up into a single score. In the site's own examples, scores appear as a number plus a band label: Kadu Wool Co. shows 92 · Great, Ledger Coffee Roasters shows 88 · Great, and Anew Refill Pharmacy shows 85 · Great.

Where the scores come from

The methodology page states that scores are "assembled by our editors from primary sources — certifications, disclosures, factory audits — never brand press kits." That distinction matters: a certification or an audit is a document produced outside the company's marketing department, while a press kit is written to persuade.

Two consequences follow from sourcing it this way:

  1. Every point is traceable. Readers can see the sourcing behind each individual point in a score, not just the final number.
  2. Scores can go down. Because the inputs are external records rather than brand-supplied summaries, new evidence can change a rating.

How often scores are updated

Scores are not static. The site says it re-checks every score by hand, "not just on intake," and that "if a company changes course, the score moves with it." In practice that means a score reflects the most recent evidence the editors have reviewed, not the state of things at the time the product or company was first listed.

What the scores are not

A few boundaries are worth keeping in mind when you read a score:

  • A high score is not a blanket endorsement of everything a brand sells. The site rates individual products as well as companies — Kadu Wool Co.'s 92, for example, is attached to its merino base layers, and the recommendation notes traceability to a single regenerative farm in Patagonia. A company-level scorecard is a separate listing type.
  • The score reflects the three questions above, not price or performance. The framework is people, planet, and honesty. It is not a general product-quality ranking.
  • Certifications checking out doesn't automatically mean the underlying claim holds. In its own investigation into fast-fashion supply chains, JoinEthically traced three major labels' recycled-fabric claims back to their mills and reported that "the certifications check out — the math behind them doesn't." That is the kind of gap the honesty dimension is meant to surface.

How to use a score when you're deciding

If you're comparing two products, the useful move is to open the sourcing behind each point rather than comparing the headline numbers alone. A 92 and an 88 are close; what separates them is which specific claims are backed by which documents. For company-level decisions — say, whether to buy from or work with a brand — the brand scorecard draws on public disclosures, labor records, and supply-chain audits, and the site says it tracks 340 companies this way.

The platform also runs a Forum with roughly 8,900 members where you can ask for sourced answers, and the site notes an AI companion surfaces relevant reporting alongside community responses. That's a reasonable next step when a score's sourcing leaves a question the scorecard itself doesn't answer.