Why Hilde prioritizes companies in certain industries
Here’s why we choose to focus on certain kinds of product categories and the companies who make or sell them
How we go about choosing
As you’ve probably noticed, a big part of Hilde is evaluating the safety and sustainability practices of companies.
Hilde chooses to prioritize evaluations for companies that make and/or sell certain kinds of products.
Given the latest environmental health science along with the eroding regulatory protections consumers currently face in the U.S., Hilde is focused on products that families routinely use in their homes.
There are numerous companies who make or sell family household products and many different family household products sold in the U.S.
A big part of the rationale for Hilde’s focus on family household products, and companies that make or sell them, is because they meet at least one (but usually more) of the following conditions:
Contain known toxic ingredients
The products have credible scientific documentation about the routine presence of hazardous chemicals in the raw materials, ingredients, formulation and/or materials used to make it.
Elevated exposure potential
The potential for people to be exposed to toxic chemicals commonly found in the products through day-to-day consumer use is relatively higher.
Exposure to vulnerable populations
Day-to-day use of the products can have an elevated potential to expose vulnerable populations (e.g. pregnant people, babies, children) to toxic chemicals.
Documented sustainability issues
Products and the companies that make them, along with their supply chains, are linked to significant impacts to people (e.g. human rights abuses, child labor) or our planet (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation).
Under or unregulated ingredients or impacts
The chemicals, raw materials, ingredients are not sufficiently regulated as to be protective of human health and vulnerable populations or to planetary systems that life depends on.
Availability of better alternatives
There are companies, products, and ingredients readily available that are safer and more sustainable than others currently available in the market.
Affordability
We consider companies and products at various price points including those that may be considered “more affordable” compared to others in their category, to support our mission of simplifying sustainability and making it more accessible to everyone.
If you’re curious about why we do evaluations in the first place, we invite you to head over here.
Okay, now what?
Once we’ve decided that we should focus on a certain type of product (sometimes called a “product category”) we identify the companies that make those kinds of products.
Then we put the company and their products we choose through our evaluation process.
You can do a deeper dive on our evaluation process here.
That process includes a bunch of ingredient safety and sustainability criteria that helps us understand how well they are working to protect people and our planet.
Find out more about our evaluation criteria, including why we focus on ingredient safety so heavily here.