Assessing and comparing natural and eco-friendly beauty products: a rubric

I've tried hundreds of natural and eco-friendly beauty, haircare and body care products over the last half decade. Some have been fab, some have fallen flat, and almost all are lacking in one area important to me. I've developed a tool for assessing, rating and comparing them which I'm sharing with you today!

The way it works is simple - each category has a max point value, and you need to rate each product in each category out of that max number. Keep in mind these values have been assigned based on how important each area is to me. By all means adjust these to reflect what matters more to you. The categories and weighting are completely customisable, just work it out before you start using it to ensure a fair comparison. 

The categories

I assess all products based on these 5 categories:

• Packaging (out of 5): this refers to how eco-friendly the packaging is. Cardboard is great, plastic is terrible, and so on. 
• Ingredients (out of 5): I'm a hardass when it comes to ingredients so this one is particularly important to me, and refers to how many questionable things appear on that precious list.
• Effectiveness (out of 5): Does it actually work?
• Value for money (out of 3): Am I happy to pay RRP for it? 
• Aesthetics (out of 2): Overall feel of packaging and product design - does it look good? Smell good? You get the idea. 

This gives each product a rating out of 20. How does it look in action? 

As you can see, you can use it to evaluate individual products as well as compare them with each other. In the second screenshot, mascara 1 would be my top pic for repurchase, followed by 3 and 4. 

I use this scale for everything I review on the blog, and will be compiling a master list on the resources page so you can see my thoughts on everything I've ever tried at a glance!

That's all for now. 

xoxo EM