Velvet Labs: Sustainability apps — changing ethical behaviours or irksome fad?

Nearly three-quarters of UK consumers don’t think brands and retailers are doing enough to make their beauty and personal care purchases more sustainable. The figures are from new research from our wonderful client The Pull Agency, and they’ve really made us think.

The study, which canvassed 2,000 UK consumers, also found that respondents identify plastic waste as the main culprit, with around half (46%) of us seeing it as the biggest sustainability challenge facing the industry.

This is a conundrum, especially when it seems that every week another brand launches its own sustainability initiative; from in-store recycling points to refillable lipsticks we’ve never had more choice when it comes to being a sustainable consumer.  

So what to do? Well, to launch its research, The Pull Agency hosted a fantastic virtual event, during which the panel highlighted a number of apps that consumers can use to measure the environmental impact and sustainability of their lifestyles. 

The issue is one that’s close to our hearts, so we decided to give three of the apps a try…

 

Eco Buddy

 Eco Buddy aims to help us make informed decisions about how we live our lives, and control our impact on the environment. The Eco Buddy website is slick and user friendly, so I expected a similar experience from the app itself – sadly not the case. With a clunky user interface and limited personalisation/data input options I was left disappointed with the overall experience.

 One of the unique aspects of Eco Buddy is the option to monitor multiple aspects of our environmental impact, from the food we consume to how we travel. When I was trialling the app, I ate an apple and vegetable soup for lunch before driving to the nearest supermarket. Due to the limited input options, I was unable to track the environmental impact of my soup, which (in theory) should be a relatively straightforward lunch item to include on the app.

Despite a disappointing performance in the app’s meal section, I was able to monitor and track my carbon footprint when it came to traveling.

It’s a shame there isn’t more to review about this app – it is a great idea in terms of the holistic approach to monitoring our carbon footprint and we’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for any updates as we hope to see more tools like this one!

 

Think Dirty

The first thing you notice about Think Dirty is the modern, user friendly design. If you’re like us and love the good use of an emoji every now and then, you’ll love this.

With up-to-date content such as ‘fearless indie beauty founders’ and ‘female owned brands’ to celebrate International Women’s Day, Think Dirty is a great example of a business that’s building a strong community of conscious consumers who are fully invested in the app and its purpose. I input my skincare routine and was pleasantly surprised at the product scoring system. Colour coding combined with clear data presentation made it super easy to understand my skincare ingredients and subsequent impact on the environment.

The ‘reviews’ tab on the app was interesting as it added an additional layer of community and trust to the app itself. I was able to read reviews from like-minded skincare enthusiasts, focusing on the effectiveness of the product, rather than limiting the conversation to environmental impact/sustainability. 

 

CoGo

CoGo’s USP is fascinating. Describing itself as a ‘real-time carbon footprint tracker’, it calculates your financial contributions to the destruction of the planet. Not quite your run-of-the-mill ethical living app.

 The key word here is ‘financial’. Alongside fast-fashion and red meat, it wants you to cede your banking data. I’m no data hoarder but I was… apprehensive about this, to say the least. Anyway, reverting to Gen-Z tropes and our willingness to share our data, I quickly granted permission. And I was actually taken back by its interoperability: it hooked up to my mobile banking in seconds.

You’re then taken to the main profile displaying two key widgets: planet and people, so I trialled the former. First thing I discovered? My December purchases racked up 594kg of CO2e, the equivalent of 10 chopped down trees and 1,474 miles in a car. Reassuring stuff!

 After that sobering wake-up call, it goes on to break down your carbon crimes: food and drink, around my home, stuff I buy, and getting around. It was meticulous enough to even compare my supermarket vs fast food hauls. Forced to then reckon with my lofty outgoings for the latter, I made the bold decision to delete my Domino’s app.

I went onto trial the people tab, examining whether you’re a customer of businesses paying the national living wage – and soon realised this is not a platform for the faint-hearted. Just 3.8% of my transactions in the past 6 months have been with ‘living wage businesses’.

 I’ve got a lot of work to do to go green. And this is coming from a vegetarian who buys clothes second-hand. But the app isn’t just a finger-wag, it’s a tangible ethical guide. It shares intel on the eco-friendliness of businesses and steers you with actions that align with a set of values selected when signing up. Each action also advises how much you’ll reduce your carbon footprint.

 CoGo is a stark realisation of the environmental impact just one consumer has. But I do believe these apps will shock us into making substantial changes – once it convinces regular folk to share their financial data.

 

 

With Pull’s survey finding 94% of consumers feel brands should be more transparent when it comes to sustainability credentials, it’s not surprising that we’re turning to ethical living apps to monitor the impact we’re having on the planet. 

Some are undoubtedly falling short of reflecting the nuanced habits of consumers, but their unique, community-driven perks offer a reason to return. And there’s space for them to grow. 

Will Eco Buddy become a leading, omnipresent platform like Facebook? Probably not. Will CoGo become a verb in its own right, i.e. ‘I just CoGo’d this’? Let’s hope it doesn’t. But as momentum for a circular economy and ethically sourced ingredients grows, these apps might just become a source of education and achievement as we make headway to a greener planet. We think they’ll stick around for the long-haul.