Like you, we’ve spent too much time searching for the best options for our family.

Once you learn more about ingredients and how certain kinds can negatively impact your child’s health it’s impossible to forget it.

Seeing and experiencing how our systems of making, using, and disposing of things can harm our planet often has a similar effect.

Since we have a certain measure of control over our purchasing decisions it feels like a good place to do what we can to protect our families and future generations.

(Don’t get us started on the algorithms designed to trick our brains into buying stuff we don’t need - it’s depressing.)

Once you know - you can’t really “un-know” what you’ve learned.

Things will likely feel much easier before you find out about this stuff.

You may yearn for the simpler times when making a Target order didn’t involve hours of research.

If you’ve stood in the cleaning aisle trying to decipher ingredient labels - we’ve been there.

If you’ve ever spent way more time than you wanted trying to research which crib mattress is the safest - we’ve been there.

If you’ve ever tried contacting the customer service team to see if you could find out if the carpeting their company makes has PFAS in it - we’ve been there.

If you’ve tried in vain to figure out which companies are doing the hard work of reducing their carbon emissions and which ones are greenwashing - we’ve been there.

If you’ve ever been confused about which certifications are trustworthy and which ones are bullsht - we’ve been there.

Basically what we’re trying to say is that we have experienced many of the same problems you have when it comes to trying to buy things we need that are safer and more sustainable.

The advantage we have is that we’ve also spent our entire careers working on safety and sustainability issues with companies, NGOs, and government agencies.

It’s hard not to feel like you should always be doing more to protect your kids.

And once you learn about the tangled web of impacts that meeting our needs can create on other families and the planet - it’s tough to not feel the weight of it.

So start small.

Maybe you think about what your next big (or small) purchase is and commit to checking our evaluations to help inform your choice.

You could decide to sign up for our email newsletter so you can learn more about the issues that matter.

Maybe you take a few extra minutes to engage in one of our advocacy activities.

Or you could just relax, know that not every decision is life or death, and decide what you’re going to make for dinner (butter noodles, we bet).

Hilde not only arms you with information to make smart purchasing decisions, we help you take action through policy as well as what we call market campaigns - activism designed to change behavior and decision-making in companies.  

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