With the launch of our review section yesterday, some questions arose about our review criteria. In particular, Pelf from The Turtle Talks commented:

Perhaps you could also share with your readers your definition of green, value and overall quality?

For example, how green is green to you, considering you will be reviewing green products only, right? And how do you define “less green”?

What about value? Do you mean value for money?

And quality? No offense, but one can only talk about quality if one has used a product before. I mean, I can say whether any product is of good or bad quality until I have used and tested it.

Great questions - and these criteria do indeed require further explanation, so here goes:

Green: How environmentally friendly is the product compared to other products in the same category? Are there any obvious ways in which the product isn’t environmentally friendly? Has the manufacturer taken steps to mitigate the effects of unavoidable environmental impacts?

Value: We are an environmental bargains site, that’s why this category carries as much weight as it does. The scores in this category should be seen from this perspective. To score exceptionally high a product must either save you money (like a $3 CFL that saves you $30 in energy bills), or provide exceptional value for money compared to other products in the same category.

Quality: Quality is a subjective measure of how well the product performs in terms of what we’d expect from it and any claims the manufacturer makes about it.  We also include how much we liked the product and how well it’s made in this category.  We only review products we’ve personally tested.

I hope that clears things up but please post a comment if there are any lingering questions.