Why & How To Get Rated?

Sustainable Jungle (SJ) is a leading consumer-focused online publication that promotes sustainable living through sharing, tips, tricks, guides, products, brands and inspiring stories.

Our readers care about their impact. They want to make conscious, deliberate and responsible choices that align with their values. To guide them, we take a holistic approach by covering a range of topics that touch upon most aspects of daily life, including home, fashion, beauty, finance, travel, tech and more.

We believe that brands who prioritize sustainability and ethics are the way of the future and we are passionate about supporting them to set the bar for a better world. We have been working with wonderful consumer brands who are on this mission since our founding in 2017 and have since featured over 1000 brands in our content since.

We are proud of the role we have played and continue to play in helping consumers find the best of the best and we believe our newly launched rating system will amplify this impact.

Learn more about us.

The Problem

Consumers care and want to change behaviors but don’t always have the tools to make better decisions where misinformation and greenwashing is rife.

According to Bain & Company:

• 64% Global consumers are very or extremely concerned about environmental sustainability
• 50% Consumers say sustainability is one of their top four key purchase criteria when shopping

However confusion and trust is complicating the ambition:

“When asked to determine which of two given products generated higher carbon emissions, consumers were wrong or didn’t know about 75% of the time.

Consumers say they rely most on labels and certifications to identify sustainable products, yet most were unable to accurately describe the meaning behind common sustainability logos, such as organic production or Fairtrade.

A lack of trust in corporations compounds the issue. Bain found only 28% of consumers trust large corporations to create genuinely sustainable products, compared to 45% who trust small, independent businesses.” (Source: Bain & Company)

Separately, we see increasing numbers of incredibly impactful brands who prioritize sustainability and ethics (many of which we’ve worked with) going out of business. This is devastating to the mission and we want to help.

How We’re Helping To Address This Problem

We believe that communicating a brand’s values, goals and achievements in a standardized consistent way will help consumers make better, more informed decisions… and buy from brands that actually align with their own values.

We also believe that a rating system should include and reflect the nuances of how difficult it is for brands to build their business to be sustainable, ethical and financially stable because let’s be honest, it takes an enormous amount of sweat and tears.

Our aim is for consumers to become better educated on what it actually takes to build a mission based business and better support brands doing just that.

About Our Rating System

Our rating system is a little different in that we focus on brands who are already on the journey to being a “sustainable & ethical brand”. We don’t rate brands who are not legitimately doing better for the planet and people. This means we can go deeper on issues that really matter and shine a light on those smaller groups who are making meaningful change.

Our rating system considers a broad range of key issues for the consumer products industry including the impact on nature & animals as well as human wellbeing and communities. We also consider a brand’s value and governance system, including their transparency.

Importantly, we have added one more layer to our rating system which again is a little different. We also consider product performance and durability and will include real human perspectives in our reviews.

With AI content becoming ubiquitous, we believe human experiences are more important than ever so we offer the option to include personal reviews and we make it possible for customers to provide feedback on their lived experiences with a brand’s products.

To learn more about the system: Our Ratings Explained

See an example in action: here

Benefits of Being Rated

Sustainable Jungle has been supporting sustainable and ethical brands since 2017 and we’ve built a portfolio of demonstrated impact for many of our favorite brands during this time through our reach and approach:

• >9.3 million reader since our founding in 2017
• >1K brands featured
• >200K monthly page views
• >50K social followers
• >14K Newsletter subscribers

Being rated by Sustainable Jungle offers the following benefits

• Visibility with conscious consumers across multiple platforms (website, newsletter and social media) building brand credibility and trust.
• License to Sustainable Jungle’s media assets including product photographs (where requested) and “Rated by Sustainable Jungle” badge for use on your brand website and socials
• Rated brands will be prioritized for features in our roundup lists of the most sustainable and ethical brands
• The annual rating refresh serves as an opportunity to track progress and improve credentials
• Access to a community and network of like-minded sustainable brands
• Access to additional feature opportunities across our platforms, including our sister publication pebblemag

The process for being rated by Sustainable Jungle is as follows:

1. Read our document on how our ratings work. This is important as you may find the approach surprising or not suitable for your brand: Our Ratings Explained.
2. Apply to be rated here. You’ll need to provide some information about your brand and its sustainability journey to date.
3. Once accepted, we will rate your brand (more on this below).
4. Once finalized, the rating will be published to our Brand Rating Directory and become searchable to readers.
5. Depending on which rating package you’ve chosen (see below) we will share the rating with our readership either through socials or additionally via our newsletter and homepage.

Top rated brands (with ratings “Disrupting” or “Mastering”) will then be featured in our roundup articles when the respective articles next get refreshed (these roundups get refreshed periodically).

Other rated brands will also be considered for other features where appropriate and at our discretion.

How we conduct the rating:

We rate using the following approach:

1. Initial Research: Using our custom research tool
2. Product testing (optional extra): By our team
3. Editorial review and refinement: By our expert team
4. Pre-publish check in: With you to clear up any misunderstandings

Read more about this here.

*Monthly charge via direct debit

**A newsletter blast can be added to the Essential and + Personal Review package for an additional US$499 Note: A pdf report outlining detailed rating results can be added to any package for an additional US$300

What is the eligibility criteria for brands to be accepted?

We will accept any brand who has started on their journey to being more sustainable however we will use our own discretion and judgment when making a final call on inclusion for example, brands who have heavily relied on sustainability claims with no follow through would not be accepted.

Why is the pricing so high?

We realize times are tough and sustainable brands are struggling. We wish we could offer better pricing however we believe a rating system is an important tool and needs to be done well with meaningful depth – which is costly to do effectively and consistently. As a way of supporting smaller brands, we have provided 3 different packages for different levels of affordability and enabled a monthly billing option.

How hard is it to get a good rating?

It really depends on how your brand’s performance compares to peers in the same industry. Overall ratings are based on a % score from points allocated for meeting certain criteria as well as a comparison to the best performing brand in the same consumer product category.

For example, a fashion brand’s score will be compared against the best performing fashion brand in our directory to establish the overall rating. Some product categories and industries are more advanced than others when it comes to sustainability so a furniture brand’s percentage score may look relatively low compared to a fashion brand’s score and still achieve the same overall rating if the furniture brand performs better than other furniture brands.

What happens if I don’t like the rating?

We will update the rating for any misunderstandings or errors however the final rating is based on a clear set of criteria which cannot be changed or amended. On renewal we refresh the brand rating and this is a great opportunity to show a brand’s improvement in their rating based on new achievements during the year.

Can I have the rating updated during the year if I improve my brand’s performance?

Unfortunately not, as it is a costly exercise to republish the ratings. We suggest waiting for the annual renewal at which point a new rating will be issued. However, you are welcome to renew earlier than one year by paying for the coming year upfront and we will refresh the rating at that time.

However, if there are any concerns about the brand behaving in a way that doesn’t meet our standards (e.g. greenwashing), we do reserve the right to update the rating ahead of the 1 year renewal.

Why is there an annual charge?

We will renew your rating every year to update for changes and improvements during the year. This will require time from our team to conduct the review.

What happens if I don’t renew?

There is no obligation to renew. Without renewal, we will remove the rating from our directory and any placements in our articles that were based on the rating.

Can I have my rating taken down?

Yes, however we require payment or commitment to pay for the full year upfront and we will not provide any refunds given the work will have already been completed by our team. Please read the our ratings explainer before you apply to be rated to make sure this is right for you and your brand: Our Ratings Explained

Still have questions?

Reach out to us at hello@sustainablejungle.com