Our belief: businesses should provide information about topics that have the potential to impact the health & well-being of people and the planet.

We think this belief holds particular relevance for the people who may purchase their products, invest in their companies, or be impacted by a company's operations. This is fair and is a reasonable expectation that we find many people share. This belief implies that companies should know about their impacts and communicate about them in ways that are open and accessible to everyone.

Look, we're not asking for information about every aspect of a business. For example: You have some secret process for making your product special? Great, keep that to yourself if you want. But if that secret process involves harmful chemicals that may end up in a product we use with our families? We want transparency.

We don't expect a company to share information that should truly be confidential. But the lack of transparency about issues that matter to everyone isn't acceptable in our book. It's time to move on from the days of every little detail being treated as confidential business information. That practice easily breeds corruption and greed.

The reality is the more companies share with consumers the more trust they garner.

Put simply: If a company isn't transparent about how their operations and products may impact people and the planet, they won't score well on our evaluation. A lack of publicly available information about ingredient safety, environmental impacts, people benefits, and corporate accountability gives us nothing to evaluate.

Like everyone else, we're left to guess or assume. The good news is, we hope that through this process Hilde will inspire the many companies out there who are doing more on safety and sustainability than their websites let on. More transparent companies will be rewarded.

This presents a huge opportunity for companies to share more and win over consumer trust and loyalty.

Providing publc disclosure on these kinds of people and planet impacts via websites, annual reports, etc. are useful tools in support of reasonable transparency.

To state the obvious: Simply providing the information without taking meaningful action isn't enough. But without access to this kind of information, driving accountability for action is virtually impossible.

And for many companies, meaningful action requires people and organizations, both internal and external to the business to push for accountability. Hilde's evaluations & company ratings are one small way that we're trying to drive accountability. Another way is through our advocacy campaigns.

Information is a crucial necessity for people who care and are working to transform systems so that they are truly sustainable and far more just.