We’re a start-up that is privately-owned and financed by a couple of parents who also happen to be sustainability professionals. We built Hilde because we face the same challenges you do when it comes to trustworthy information about companies and their business practices, particularly when it comes to the safety of the ingredients and materials they use in their products. You can find out more about the founders here.

Hilde is built differently than other sites or apps that try to provide product recommendations in a number of important ways. Here’s a few that we think will matter to you and your family:

Hilde provides unbiased evaluations

We don’t charge companies to be evaluated and we’re not trying to sell you products. By eliminating these conflicts of interest we can give you our honest opinions without feeling pressured to compromise for financial reasons.

We use comprehensive criteria

Unlike others, we evaluate a comprehensive set of issues that are relevant to all kinds of companies. Our ratings include criteria related to ingredient safety, environmental impacts, people impacts & benefits, and corporate accountability.

Hilde rates companies instead of products

Companies change the ingredients and ways they make products all the time. Tired of trying to find that one, specific product recommended by someone because it is safer and more sustainable? So are we. That’s why Hilde helps you find companies rather than products. When we recommend a company, that’s our way of telling you that we prefer any product made by that company or the brands they own.

We’re advocating for change

We are seasoned advocates who have run corporate activism and public policy campaigns at the local, state, and federal levels. When you support Hilde [LINK] you are supporting our efforts to change the system in ways that help protect families and our planet.

We bring deep expertise

We’re not content creators, influencers, or marketing agencies. We’re sustainability and impact experts who have education and experience that know the science and understand how companies work.

Find out more about our founders here.

When it comes to evaluating and rating the ethical business practices of a business, our philosophy is that we should be doing it for the entity or organization with the most control over making decisions that influence the issues that matter. In our experience, when a company owns multiple brands, that “parent company” often has the most control over ingredient safety, sustainability, and corporate accountability decisions. While the company may try to make it seem like each of their brands are unique businesses, that isn’t how they operate in practice. Read more about our rationale in this blog post.

We want to help your family make informed decisions when you need to make a purchase. But we don’t want to feed into the problem of overconsumption - which is a behavior that contributes to our growing impacts on people and the planet. We know we can’t shop our way to a more sustainable society or economy. That’s why we don’t try to make money by using “affiliate” programs, links, referral codes, or other kinds of ways that sites or apps get paid to help sell stuff. You can read more on this topic here.

Hilde does have or maintain formal relationships or affiliations with any of the organizations that administer or otherwise manage certification programs that may appear on our company rating pages. We do not conduct certifications on their behalf and do not have input on their requirements or certification process. We may list them for informational purposes only. Find out more about the role of certifications in our company evaluations and ratings in this blog post.

Yes! Let us know the name of the company you’d like to see us evaluate and rate and we’ll see what we can do. Please use this form to submit your request.

We use a comprehensive set of criteria that cover a broad range of ethical business topics including ingredient safety, sustainability (people and planet), and corporate accountability. We call these four topics “evaluation categories”. Here’s a summary of the topics we include for each evaluation category:

Ingredient Safety

Our ingredient safety evaluation criteria are designed to help us determine how a company measures, manages, and discloses, the use of chemicals of concern that may be present in raw materials, ingredients, manufacturing processes, and finished products

Environmental Impact Reduction

Our environmental impact reduction evaluation criteria are designed to help us determine how a company measures, manages, and discloses information about the impacts that their operations, products, and supply chain may have on our air, land, water, and ecosystems.

Benefits for People

Our benefits for people evaluation criteria are designed to help us determine how a company measures, manages, and discloses information about the way they treat their employees, workers in their supply chain, and other stakeholders.

Corporate Accountability

Our corporate accountability evaluation criteria are designed to help us determine how a company integrates sustainability across their organization to help govern decision making and engage with external stakeholders in socially responsible ways.

Each of the evaluation categories include a number of criteria designed to help us form a holistic opinion about the status of how the company is attempting to run its business in ethical ways.

There are a few places you can find out more information about the criteria we use to assign category ratings and company status. You can get a really good sense of the criteria we use by looking at the “Likes” and “Opportunities for Improvement” included on the evaluation page for every company we’ve rated. If you want to go deeper, read through our evaluation criteria blog post. Premium Professional subscribers are also able to view a list of some of the specific criteria included in each category in the “Company Insights” sections of company evaluation pages.

Assigning a rating for each category of criteria that we evaluate is part of our company evaluation process. For each evaluation category (e.g. Ingredient Safety) we assign one of three ratings based on the number and nature of the criteria that the company appears to meet after performing in-depth research of publicly available information. Our three possible category ratings and their definitions include:

Foundational Gaps: The company does not appear to meet a number of our basic evaluation criteria for this category and has many opportunities for improvement.

Solid Baseline: The company appears to meet most or all of our basic evaluation criteria for this category and appears to demonstrate a more advanced approach in one or more areas of impact.

Strong Performance: The company appears to meet most or all of our evaluation criteria for this category and exhibits leadership on one or more of the issues we evaluate.

Read more about our methods here.

Our company status is equivalent to an overall rating for the company. Like our category ratings, the company status is calculated based on how well the company performs on our evaluation. To determine the company status we look at how well the company performed in each of our evaluation categories. Our three possible company status ratings and their definitions include:

Avoid: We try to avoid purchasing or using products made by this company or their brands in our homes.

Consider: We may decide to purchase or use products made by this company or their brands in our homes when other options are not accessible.

Recommend: We regularly try to purchase and use products made by this company or their brands in our homes.

In general, a company needs to achieve “Solid Baseline” ratings or better in most or all of our evaluation categories to get a “Consider” status rating. Companies need to achieve “Strong Performance” in at least two evaluation categories and receive no “Foundational Gaps” category ratings to get a “Recommended” status rating.

We focus on companies because in our experience they tend to apply their organizational policies and practices across their brands and on all of the products they make. We don’t often find the opposite to be true. Just because an individual brand or specific product has some safety or sustainability attributes doesn’t mean that is true for all of the products made by that company.

Focusing on companies also lets us capture more kinds of products in our evaluations and look more comprehensively across subsidiaries of a single company. We think it’s more helpful over the long term to find a company you can trust and that aligns with your values rather than having to search for individual products. You can read more about why we evaluate companies here.

We haven’t chosen to prioritize evaluating companies in the fashion and apparel industry for a few reasons. For one, clothing isn’t a common source of exposure to toxic ingredients for most consumers. There are some exceptions, like water repellant coatings made using PFAS. But compared to other kinds of products, clothing just doesn’t rise to the top of exposure sources. Second, there are LOTS of other organizations that review sustainability in the fashion industry. We plan on providing some general recommendations about how to make decisions about clothing purchases to reduce the impact that producing clothes (which is significant) can have on the planet in the future.

In general we typically evaluate the parent company that owns a specific brand because we find that their ingredient safety and sustainability policies and practices tend to take precedence over those used by subsidiary companies. In other words, the company that owns the brand controls decision making about the products made and sold under the brand name. In our experience it is unusual to find a parent company that adopts the policies and practices of one of the brands they own except in specific circumstances. We think we get more accurate results when we evaluate the parent company. In some cases we may choose to evaluate a brand owned by another company, including when a brand is owned by a holding company with no overarching policies or practices or when the brand was recently acquired. Find out more about our evaluation process here.

Simply put, they are an easy way to signal “values” quickly and they should make our lives easier. Well at least they should be, but as you likely know, not all certifications are created equal and many can actually be used as a tool to greenwash consumers. We evaluate certifications using an established set of criteria to determine if they are higher quality from our perspective. Higher quality certifications that we trust we designate as “Hilde Approved”. In some cases, the use of higher quality certifications may be included in our evaluation criteria. To find out more about the certifications we trust head here.

No. Our company evaluations and ratings are based exclusively on publicly available information.

The term circularity refers to a way of thinking about the lifecycle of a product. There are many steps involved in a product lifecycle and each one of them often has a variety of potential impacts to people and the planet. The concept of circularity is one that can be applied to reduce the impacts across a product lifecycle in a number of ways.

Making a product more circular can involve changes in the kinds of materials used in a product and its packaging, the way the product is designed, making it easier to repair, or making it reusable, among many other things. Our evaluation considers efforts by a company to make their products and packaging more circular by looking at choices they make at a variety of stages in the product lifecycle. That may include things like using post-consumer recycled materials or providing a product takeback program. You can find more details about our evaluation criteria here.

Yes, please! We’re human and humans sometimes miss things or make mistakes. That’s why we’re always interested in hearing from people who may have different opinions or are able to provide additional information. Feel free to contact us using this form.

For starters, we like to see a company become a certified B-corp or incorporate as a benefit company when provided by state law. We think B-corp certification is a higher quality one and include it in our evaluation criteria. But, we also think there are some important differences between

Hilde only uses publicly available information

Our evaluations are based exclusively on information that anyone can find online. We do not use, nor do we require confidential information to complete our ratings.

Hilde does not evaluate brands

Our philosophy is to evaluate the organization that controls decision making, which typically isn’t a brand but the company who owns the brand. B-corp chooses to assess and certify companies but also brands owned by other companies.

Hilde goes deeper on specific issues

While we think B-corp generally has a well-rounded approach to assessing companies, we believe our evaluation criteria go deeper and have more rigorous requirements on specific topics like ingredient safety, climate protection, and ethical AI use, to name a few.

Hilde doesn’t charge companies to be evaluated & rated

We do not collect a registration fee, an assessment fee, or any kind of annual dues from the companies we rate.

Learn more about how certifications like B-corp factor into our company evaluations in this blog post.

Sorry to hear that you may be having issues with your professional subscription. We get how annoying it can be. Not being able to log in or access the information you need is frustrating. Know that you are an important member of Hilde and we value your support. We want to help you ASAP. Please message us using our contact form and be sure to select the “Professional Subscription” box. We’ll do our best to respond within 24 hours.

We often reach out to companies during our evaluation process to try and find out more information. It’s a very good chance we’d like to learn more about the ingredient safety, sustainability, and corporate accountability efforts at your company. Having a conversation with us is totally voluntary and is a low-pressure affair. We’re not interested in shaming or putting you in an awkward position. We know how challenging this work can be. And we know our evaluation criteria are challenging. But we think it’s worth your time because it could help us do a better job of rating your company. If we don’t hear back from you after a while we’ll move forward with finalizing and publishing our rating.

We’ve worked with people from lots of companies just like yours to solve complex ingredient safety and sustainability challenges. If we can’t help then we probably know someone who can. If you’d like to talk more about elevating the safety and sustainability practices at your company feel free to contact us. If you’re looking for a super affordable place to start, we recommend becoming a professional subscriber. You can find out more about how our professional content and programming can help here.

Our professional subscriptions are intended to help fill a void that exists when it comes to getting expert guidance on ethical business issues like ingredient safety, sustainability, advocacy, and others. It’s a great option for entry and mid-level professionals who are responsible for working on these kinds of issues in companies, but might not have the resources to hire a consultant to help. In fact, our premium professional subscription gives you access to quarterly live Q&A sessions where you can get real-time advice on your biggest challenges. It’s like getting some time with professional consultants every few months who are focused on helping you deliver impact and overcome barriers.

In addition to a variety of exclusive content, our premium professional subscription includes quarterly live Q&A sessions with seasoned sustainability leaders. These sessions are comparable to getting several hours of professional consulting time every year without the financial commitment typically required to hire someone with decades of experience. You’ll get in-depth dialogue on the issues that matter most to you and your business from people who know.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone who is responsible for working on the kinds of issues we cover in our company evaluations. First off, thank you for your hard work and commitment. We’ve been in your shoes. We know the challenges you’re facing. If you’re looking for help you’ve come to the right place.

Here’s some options depending on your level of experience, budget, and capacity:

Low-cost but DIY: Our basic professional subscriptions include access to content that can help you identify and address issues that are holding you back when it comes to our company ratings.

Hands-on support for modest cost: Our premium professional subscriptions are going to unlock more advanced content and insights while also providing quarterly live-Q&A sessions with sustainability experts where you get help addressing your specific questions, barriers, or challenges.

It’s just us humans here doing these reviews so it’s possible that we missed something. If you think we didn’t see some info on your site or in a report please reach out. Our evaluations are based exclusively on publicly available information.

Our standard evaluation process often includes reaching out to companies we evaluate before we publicly share our ratings. We’ve been in your shoes before and believe us, we did not like getting those “have you seen this yet?” messages from colleagues. It’s possible that you didn’t get our messages or that they were ignored. Either way, we’re happy to talk through our evaluation and make revisions if appropriate.

Our evaluations and ratings are based on a snapshot in time. While we intend to re-evaluate companies every couple of years, sometimes things change and we’re not aware. If your ingredient safety or sustainability policies and practices have changed since we evaluated the brand then we may need to update. We’ll do our best to make updates as quickly as possible if you let us know.

Excellent! Business voices can be very powerful when it comes to changing public policy. Whether you’re thinking about launching your own campaign or joining ours we are happy to help. In fact, we even have some free guidance to share if you want. Please contact us to find out more.

Uh oh! First of all, please know that we’re not trying to target you or your colleagues personally. In fact, we typically try to engage with a company before we launch any kind of public activism campaign. That said, if your company ignored our outreach efforts or did not engage in good faith, well… Essentially, we’re looking for your company to make some changes. We’re definitely still open to connecting with you to figure out the best path forward. There are lots of ways that can happen. Please contact us to find out more.

No. Hilde is a business and is not a non-profit organization or other kind of tax exempt organization. Contributions made through our website are voluntary contributions to our business. A contribution is not required to receive any product or service, and it is not tax-deductible as a charitable contribution.

Your contribution helps us pay for things like: Building and maintaining a complex website, conducting in-depth research, completing company evaluations, planning and managing advocacy campaigns, and other mission-critical expenses required to help us keep our content free for families like yours. Your contribution does not go towards: Paid advertising, travel expenses, office supplies, fancy conferences, or other frivolous things.

We’re so small we don’t even have a “careers” page yet! But once we’re in a position to start hiring full time staff we’ll post any open roles on our website. Please check back periodically and thanks for your interest in supporting our mission.