Our company ratings are the basis for how we build our Top Rated and other lists of companies. Our company evaluation process uses publicly available information to assess how well a company performs in terms of their policies, practices, and operations as they may impact our health and the health of our planet. The areas of impact or evaluation categories that we include are ingredient safety, sustainability (including environmental impact and worker fairness), and corporate accountability.

How well a company performs on the individual criteria included in our evaluation plays a direct role in how we assign ratings. The number and nature of the criteria that are successfully met in any given category (i.e. ingredient safety, environmental impact, benefits for people, accountability) is the basis by which Hilde calculates a rating for that particular evaluation category. Those evaluation category ratings are then used to determine a company "status" or an overall rating of the company. Find out more about how Hilde assigns ratings & company status here.

In our experience it's actually easier to find companies that align with your values rather than constantly searching for specific products. That's one of the reasons why you won't find product reviews, recommendations, or reviews on our site. As with the rest of our methods, Hilde reserves the right to update the way we build lists at our discretion.

When we build our list of top rated companies for specific product categories, or across all the product categories we prioritize, it generally includes companies and the brands they own that are in the top 20% of all the companies we evaluate and rate. More specifically, we only select companies that have received one of the following overall ratings:

Recommended

These are our best in class companies. We regularly try to purchase and use products made by these companies or their brands in our homes. Based on our most recent analysis, only 3.5% of companies that we have evaluated and rated have received this overall status. We typically prioritize companies with this overall status rating in our Top Rated lists.

Consider

This is our second tier of companies that we may decide to purchase or use products made by this company or their brands in our homes when other options are not accessible. Based on our most recent analysis, about 19% of companies that we have evaluated and rated have received this overall status. We may include companies with this overall rating status as secondary choices like in cases where we believe a company exhibits performance that exceeds that of their peers with similar overall ratings or who stand out in other important ways.

We typically do not include any companies that have received an overall status rating of Avoid in our Top Rated list but reserve the right to make exceptions under certain circumstances. In those cases we will clearly note why we are making an exception.

In addition to our top rate companies lists we may also feature "safer & more affordable options" lists. The companies that we may choose to include as safer & more affordable options are ones that we believe make products that represent safer, more sustainable products at more accessible price points than their competitors.

To be included in this list the company must receive our highest rating (i.e. “Strong Performance”) on our ingredient safety evaluation category. In some cases we may make an exception to this rule and include a company that has received a “Solid Baseline” rating in the ingredient safety category. We will not include a company that has received a “Foundational Gaps” category rating on this list under any circumstances.

It is not uncommon for companies that exhibit strong performance on ingredient and material safety to not perform as well (i.e. receive Foundational Gaps category ratings) on one or more of the other categories we evaluate like environmental impact, worker fairness, or corporate accountability. These lower category ratings often mean that a company with strong performance in ingredient safety receives an "Avoid" overall status rating.

In some cases we may include companies that have received an overall status rating of Avoid in this list. We make this exception because we believe that ingredient safety represents a uniquely important area for the health of our families and for the kinds of products we choose to bring into our homes. It's something that we as parents often choose to prioritize for the companies and products over other issues related to sustainability or corporate accountability.

Learn why ingredient safety is particularly important for our kids. Read more about our methods including our evaluation category ratings and overall company status ratings.

As always, please contact us if you have any questions about any of our lists, company ratings, or other aspects of how we do what we do. We welcome your perspective, scrutiny, and requests.