Provenance is quite an interesting organization, they want to help companies to track the provenance of their products and their impact.

Our aim is that one day every great product will come with Provenance: accessible, trustworthy information about origin, journey and impact. Why? Because our collective power lies in our shared knowledge. By unlocking the facts, we can empower shoppers to drive progress through their purchasing power. At the same time, we can generate rewards for brands making a positive impact on people and planet.

They recently released an excellent initiative, the open-source Provenance Framework, which is “is made up of 50+ shopper-facing claims spanning 5 focus areas: climate, communities, nature, waste and workers”.

Each claim, from ‘Fully Recycled Packaging’ to ‘Black Owned Business’, comes with clear criteria for what constitutes legitimate evidence, as well as guidance on how to communicate it publicly. This gives you clear, robust parameters for what you can and can’t legitimately say about your brand or products.

A growing number of consumers want to make purchases based on environmental and social impact, and in turn, companies want to document and make visible the efforts they are making. But that information can be confusing and inconsistent, and wrongly claiming something can have very negative impacts on the company making them. This is why Provenance decided to document a lot of their learnings in a framework, providing a strong base for companies who are starting to analyse their own production chain and what they are doing right.

We’ve made the Provenance Framework open to all because we know that without a universal standard for making claims, it’s not easy for brands to communicate credibly on their social and environmental impact.