Methodology

Why this page exists

Every badge and score on this directory links here. Trust is the product -- a claim you can't check in one click isn't worth showing.

Verification tiers

Listed

A basic check: the business exists, the contact details resolve, and nothing on file contradicts the claim to being a sustainable business. This is the free, low-friction entry point -- most new listings start here.

Reviewed

A ViCo curator has scored the listing against the 4-pillar rubric below, based on evidence the business or our research provided. Reviewed listings show their score.

Verified

Every sustainability claim and certification is backed by evidence a curator has personally checked (certificate numbers, issuing body confirmation, or direct documentation). Certifications that expire automatically drop this badge until renewal is confirmed.

The 4-pillar rubric

Reviewed and Verified listings are scored 0-3 on each of four pillars. We show the four scores side by side, never summed into one number -- a business strong on Environment and weak on Governance is a different story than an "average" one, and a single number would hide that.

Environment -- resource use, emissions, waste, and material choices. 0 = no evidence of practice; 1 = stated intent only; 2 = documented practice with partial evidence; 3 = independently verifiable practice with measurable outcomes.
Social -- labor conditions, community impact, and product/service social value. Same 0-3 scale: unevidenced, stated, documented, independently verifiable.
Governance -- ownership transparency, ethical sourcing policy, and accountability structures.
Transparency -- how openly the business shares the evidence behind its own claims. This pillar exists specifically to penalize greenwashing: a business that says a lot but shows little scores low here regardless of how the other three pillars land.

Provenance -- where entries come from

Every entry on this directory carries a visible source line: ViCo's own research, scraped from a named public source (with a link back to it), or submitted by the business itself. Nothing is auto-published -- everything, regardless of source, passes through a review queue before it goes live.

Flagging a listing

Anyone can report a listing directly from its page -- inaccurate information, unsupported ("greenwashed") claims, a business that's closed, or anything else. A report reopens that listing for review; nothing is removed automatically, but nothing gets ignored either.

Have a concern about a specific listing? Open its page and use "Report this listing" at the bottom.