Hop-Score allows to evaluate the ecological footprint of a product by providing a sort of ecological barometer. This indicator is built thanks to data coming from reliable sources: environmental labels, manufacturer datasheets or NGO. The goal is to provide a global ecological information when and where you shop everyday, simply.

The ecological barometer is a global overview of a product's environmental characteristics.

To build this indicator, we get information provided by labels, NGO or the manufacturer of the rated product. To represent the product's sustainability footprint with fidelity, we considered 2 kinds of data :

• Linked to the brand: that information represents the importance of the sustainable development in the global policy of the manufacturer. This kind of indicator takes into account efforts made by the company to minimize its evironmental impact by optimising its production activity (environmental care, HR policy, carbon gas reduction objectives, work conditions,...)
• Linked to the product: those data focus on product-centered environmental characteristics. We simplify a product's lifecycle into 4 main steps:
  • Fabrication

    The fabrication process of a product can be optimised to require less energy, to produce less waste, etc.

  • Distribution

    The distribution step includes the transportation and packaging of the product.

  • Use

    When being used, appliances consume more or less ressources to perform the task they are intended.

  • Recycling

    The end of life of our devices can be made easier when manufacturers take some responsabilities, concerning the materials used to build the production or their subscription to a recycling program.

  
  

  For each of these points, we select raw indicators which allow us to evaluate as simply as possible the environmental quality of a product. For example, we take into the account electric consumption of a device to show its impact during its use.

For each product category, Hop-Cube selected some criterias representing the environemental quality of a product. Among all the values obtained for one criteria, we determine the max and min values for this criteria. That enables us to scale the values on a range between 0 and 10.

Let's take the refrigerator category : considering the electric consumption of this category is dispatched between 200 and 500 KWh/year, associated with scores from 10 to 0. A refrigerator which would consume 232KWh/year will be given a score of 8,9/10.

And we make this calculation for each evaluation criteria for each product. Finnaly, we get a collection of grades out of 10.

Next, we realize a simple weigthed average of the all the scores determined for each product. The weight of a score determines its importance in the HopScore grade. Then, Hop-Cube considers that criteria directly linked to the product are much more important than the criteria given by the CSR policy of the manufacturer: so we attributed a weight of 3 for product-linked criterias against 1 for the company-linked criteria.

If you have any remark or comment concerning our methodology, feel free to send it to us through the suggestion form, at the bottom of this page.

N.B. : information concerning the electric consumption are currently provided by Energy Star. This American label is a guarantee of energy efficiency. Then, for the labeled devices, we score the energy concumption criteria between 5 and 10.

Hop-Score is willing to disseminate environmental information in the places of everyday consumption, starting with the e-commerce sites. You are continually asked to make choices for the planet, but how to do without information? Hop-Score meets this lack of information by providing environmental barometer, which aims to help you to make better choices for you and for the planet.

Hop-Cube was born of the desire to use information technology in the field of sustainable development. We are convinced that IT is a major asset in this issue and Hop-Score, which democratizes ecological information, is an evidence. More information about Hop-Cube.com.

We are open to any suggestion : ask us questions, propose your ideas, help us to improve.