Methodology

Where the product information comes from

We read the public Amazon listing — the same page you're looking at when you shop.

The product title, photos, price, star rating, brand, and category all come straight from the item's public Amazon page. That's the same information anyone can see; we simply gather it up and add a sustainability layer on top.

We don't touch your account, your cart, your orders, or anything private. Nothing we show is based on your personal shopping history.

How we figure out which company actually makes a product

The name on a listing isn't always the company responsible — so we trace it back to the one that is.

Sustainability practices are set at the company level, not the individual-product level. But a listing might show a random storefront name, a marketplace seller, or a small label owned by a much larger parent company. To score the right organization, we do three things:

• Ignore generic marketplace names. Sellers and storefronts that aren't the actual maker (including plain "Amazon" listings) are set aside — they don't tell us who's responsible for how something is made.
• Identify the real brand. We work out the genuine brand behind the product from the listing itself.
• Trace sub-brands to their parent. Many familiar brands are owned by a larger company that sets the real environmental and labor standards. When that's the case, the smaller brand inherits its parent's record.

A quick example

Say a smaller label is wholly owned by a large parent corporation. On its own the label may publish very little, but the practices that matter — factories, sourcing, labor standards — are its parent's. So we attach the parent's verified record to it, rather than pretending the sub-brand exists in a vacuum. If we can't confidently match a product to a real company, we'd rather leave it unrated than guess.

How fresh the information is

Prices are refreshed every day, straight from Amazon — and when we're not sure a price is current, we say so instead of guessing.

We pull updated prices from Amazon daily so what you see stays close to the live number. Sustainability information updates as new public reports, certifications, and records become available.

If a daily price refresh is ever missed, we don't show you a stale figure. Instead we replace it with a simple "See price on Amazon" link so you can check the real, current price before you decide.

How we make money — and why it never touches the scores

Money and scores are kept completely separate. A brand can't pay for a better score, and we're never paid to rank one product above another.

Leif List is free to use. We earn in two disclosed ways:

• Amazon Associates. When you buy through an Amazon link on our site, we may earn a small commission — at no extra cost to you. (You'll see this noted at the bottom of every page.)
• Partner brands. A handful of brands are affiliate partners. Wherever one appears, it's clearly labeled as sponsored so you always know what you're looking at.

Here's the firewall that matters: none of that money influences a score or a ranking. Scores come only from the sustainability data. The order products appear in comes from that score plus the values you choose to prioritize — never from who pays us. A sponsored partner earns its placement the same way every other brand does.

What about the browser extension?

When you shop on Amazon directly through the Leif List browser extension, we add nothing at all to Amazon's links — no tags, no changes. Affiliate links on Amazon are only used on this website, and only in the disclosed way described above.

Curious how the score itself is actually built, and what "Good," "Great," and "Unrated" really mean? That's covered on How Scoring Works.