How does Social Supermarket rate the sustainability of branded merchandise?

Every product in the merchandise catalogue is assessed against 5 criteria: Eco-Friendly Materials Plus, Eco-Friendly Materials, Upcycling, Responsible Manufacturing, Positive Supply Chain Impact. The number a product meets becomes its score, and the score maps to a rating from AA down to D. The public marketplace lists only products meeting at least 2 of them.

Is the sustainability rating a third-party certification?

No. It is our own assessment, applied consistently across the whole catalogue and published so you can check it. Several of the criteria are earned through third-party standards, such as a recognised social audit or a recycled-content standard, but the rating itself is ours rather than an external body's.

What does the Responsible Manufacturing criterion mean?

A product earns it in one of three ways: it was made under a recognised social-audit standard such as BSCI or SMETA, it was manufactured in Europe, where the regulatory floor on labour and environmental standards does that work instead, or we hold an assessment of that brand or supplier which applies to their products. A named audit is the largest single route at roughly 46% of the products holding this criterion, with about 20% on European manufacture and the remainder inherited from a brand or supplier assessment.

How we rate sustainability

Most merchandise suppliers put an “eco” label on part of their range without saying what earns it. We would rather show our working, so here is exactly how every product in our branded merchandise catalogue is assessed, what the rating means, and what it does not tell you.

The criteria

Each product is checked against these 5 criteria. Most are independent of one another: a product can be made from recycled material and still tell you nothing about the factory it came from, which is why we count them separately rather than rolling them into one number.

The two materials criteria are the exception. Anything qualifying for the stronger one also counts for the weaker, so it scores two. On a product page we show only the stronger badge, because displaying both would just repeat the same fact, which means a product can hold two criteria while showing one materials badge.

Eco-Friendly Materials PlusMade largely or entirely from lower-impact materials such as recycled, organic or plant-based content.
Eco-Friendly MaterialsContains recognised lower-impact materials such as recycled, organic or plant-based content.
UpcyclingUses upcycled or reclaimed materials, such as ocean-bound or repurposed waste, giving them a second life.
Responsible ManufacturingMade under a recognised social-audit standard or in a European factory.
Positive Supply Chain ImpactBacked by Fair Trade, or by a social enterprise creating positive impact such as employing refugees or sourcing from artisan makers.

How the rating is worked out

The score is the number of criteria a product meets, with no weighting on top, so the same evidence always produces the same rating. Remember the materials pair above: a product can score two while showing a single materials badge.

Rating	Criteria met	What it means
AA	4 or 5	Meets almost everything we look for
A	3	Strong on materials and on how it was made
B	2	Clears our bar on two independent counts
C	1	One point in its favour, and no more
D	0	Nothing we can evidence

What the rating changes

The grade is not decoration. It decides what we will sell you.

This marketplace lists only products meeting at least 2 criteria.
Clients buying through their own storefront see a wider graded range, with every product carrying its rating and the criteria behind it, so a lower-scoring option can be weighed against a brief deliberately rather than by accident.
Products meeting none of the criteria are not offered on either.

That is the difference between a tag and a grade. A tag is added to the products a supplier wants to promote. A grade decides what gets sold.

What this rating does not tell you

A rating that only ever flatters the thing it measures is not worth much, so it is worth being clear about the limits.

It is our assessment, not a certification. Several criteria are earned through third-party standards, such as a recognised social audit or a recycled-content standard, but the rating itself is ours. We publish it so you can disagree with it specifically rather than generally.
Responsible Manufacturing is earned three ways. A recognised social audit such as BSCI or SMETA, European manufacture where the regulatory floor does that job instead, or an assessment we hold at brand or supplier level rather than against the individual product. A named audit is the largest single route but not a majority: it accounts for roughly 46% of the products holding this criterion, European manufacture for about 20%, and the rest is inherited from a brand or supplier assessment or a certification that supplier holds.
Some criteria are applied at brand or supplier level. Where we hold a credible assessment of a maker, it applies to their products rather than being re-derived for each one. That is a deliberate trade of granularity for coverage, and it means a criterion is not always evidence about that specific item.
It is not a carbon figure. A high rating says a product is better on materials, manufacture or supply chain. It is not a footprint, and we will not present it as one.
Material claims come from the supply chain.Where a criterion rests on a declared material or a supplier’s audit status, it is only as good as that declaration. Where we can point at a named standard instead, we do.