I believe writing reviews can profoundly change the world. Seriously.

About five years ago, I started a project.

The simple idea is that I rate local businesses (or products) on two rating scales:

  1. A conventional rating, on a scale of 1 to 5 Gold Stars, for Quality and Price.
  2. A second rating, on a scale of 1 to 5 Green Stars, for Social and Environmental Impact.

Social and Environmental impact can include a range of issues. Some people like to think of the categories of Animals, People, and Planet. We all care about different things to different degrees - some may be passionate about switching to plant-based diets, and others may be most concerned about plastic pollution or human rights. Most of us care about many issues, to some extent, and that’s why it’s important that we think about the choices that we make and also share our information and opinions with others. Corporations are responsible for an awful lot of the problems we face on this planet, so it’s really about time that we develop a system to rate them for their impact, so that we can see which businesses are worthy of our support.

By the way, I have summarized my top social and environmental concerns as follows:

  1. Climate (carbon footprint, sustainability)
  2. Habitats (land and water use, pollution, farming methods)
  3. Inequality (wealth distribution, corporate hegemony, animal rights)
  4. Population Growth (community development, trade practices)

But since everyone sees things a little bit differently, my idea of a business that deserves 5 Green Stars is likely to be a little different to yours. And that’s why we generally tend to trust crowdsourced opinions more than one individual opinion. When looking for a new restaurant, I’m more likely to go to Google Maps to see then consensus rating of many people than to go with a single food critic or restaurant guide. Similarly, although ethical guides (like Ethical Consumer in the UK, or Shop Ethical, in Australia) have been really useful, we now need to evolve into a user-generated (crowdsourced) system for ethical ratings.

Let’s say you’re reviewing a local business and you are interested in deciding on an ethical (Green Stars) rating – well, like many people you may not be sure where to start. I’ve written over 150 reviews on Google Maps and have awarded a Green Stars rating for each of them. It becomes easier as you get the hang of it!

My blog (The Green Stars Project) is devoted to helping guide people on assessing social and environmental impact. For example, in this post, I have provided a scorecard to help decide on an ethical rating for a café.

As I wrote more reviews, I realized that providing an ethical score was useful to others (lots of positive feedback) and also useful to me. Pausing to think about the impact of the business that I was supporting made me more conscious about my impact on others. It felt a little like having a regular compassionate meditation practice (like Metta Bhavana, in the Buddhist tradition). I encourage you to try it!

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