Our Impact Formula

Welcome to our formula for calculating impact! Beginning with our second launch, this one formula, which you can access starting from our first launch, will be used to calculate the impact of all companies. Here are 4 things that make this formula special:

1. You can adjust the weight of each factor. You can make environmental impact your top priority, just as easily as you can ignore it completely. Or, maybe you’d like to focus the societal impact entirely on gender equity. It’s up to you! You can keep your adjustments private or share it with friends and followers! In the meantime, we’ll use what we learn about your values to help companies treat you right.

2. The formula is built collectively. Inviting you all to help build out the formula not only helps us quickly figure out everything you want us to look for, but also keeps the formula adaptive. That way, new scientific discoveries or political movements as well as new innovations from companies who are being creative in their approach to impact improvement can find their place in everyone's next shopping decisions.

3. Worried about it being “unfair” to certain industries or companies? Don’t be! The beauty of this one-size fits all scoring system is that we’ll present each score alongside the average score across each company’s most direct competitors, in addition to the industry’s average score. We’ll be sure to define direct competitors by considering the size of their companies and their price points, on top of other factors like who they serve and what makes their products and services unique. So, while we might include Adidas and New Balance, we won’t be comparing Nike to other activewear companies like Patagonia — that part is up to you. After just a couple uses, we expect you'll be a pro at knowing how each industry and niche compares to your standards.

4. It's educational. While we won't throw an entire Wikipedia page at your face for not understanding one concept, that is how deep you can go if you need it.

We invite you to make as many suggestions as you’d like! Start conversations and collect votes that will help bring your suggestions to our attention. As we love accessibility here at Ethically Copped, we recommend linking any articles or content that might help explain your point to other users (and maybe us too), but we don’t require it — if you’re onto something, someone will back you up. If your point is valid and the matter has been measured by at least one company, we’ll lock it into our default formula and pat you on the back (unless 😗..?)

Visual examples

See what goes into calculating environmental impact!

Adjust the weight of a factor and get the basic gist of another…

…or break it down even further!

And further!

(And even further.)

Add your own two cents by creating a post tagged with that specific location.

These two cents may eventually turn into its very own component, where the search for better impact continues.

What are some interesting things you've seen companies do to better the world?