The following blog post was written by Lindsay Thom and was published last month on BCIC’s blog as part of a series profiling BCIC-NewVentures Competition: Regional Top 20 Finalists.
In North America, 87 percent of consumers care about the environmental impact of the products they buy, yet only 33 percent actually purchase eco-friendly products. In a marketplace filled with fragmented information, misleading eco-labels and “green-washed” marketing campaigns, it’s difficult to find trustworthy facts on which to base a purchasing decision.
EcoMeter solves this problem. Consumers can use its free web and mobile applications to assess the true environmental impact of more than 350,000 products. EcoMeter crawls the web to collect, organize and analyze product ratings and reviews based on specific environmental values, delivering an easy-to-understand, real-time environmental score for each product queried. It looks beyond eco-labels and green-product claims to deliver an objective environmental assessment. EcoMeter can be used on e-commerce sites or at offline retail stores. EcoMeter does for sustainable products what CarrotLines does for healthy eating.
EcoMeter is one of 20 finalists in BCIC-New Ventures Competition: Regional vying for one of three cash prizes worth a total $60,000. As title sponsor of the first annual regional version of the BCIC-NVC technology competition, BCIC is strengthening BC’s startup environment while supporting the advancement of BC’s emerging technology industry.
To win the competition, EcoMeter’s team must convince the BCIC-NVC jury that it is a commercially viable business.
Winners will be announced February 24, 2011 in Kelowna, BC.