The retailer who has instigated the Four Leaf system has committed to providing its customers with a mechanism to make better informed purchasing decisions. There has been increasing consumer expectation for such initiatives. Our research has shown that over 90% of consumers will change brand preference if a more environmentally friendly alternative was known to be available.

Four Leaf will enable consumers to easily identify and support greener companies and their products. The product ratings are derived from 20 questions over four differing categories – raw materials, energy, water and impacts. Eight of the questions are SKU specific and twelve relate to total company performance.

For ease of consumer understanding, the scores are presented visually in the four leaves of a clover and range in colour from green, being environmentally friendly through yellow - neutral to red which indicates environmentally unfriendly.

Key to Four Leaf is that majority of the information is readily available and maybe already furnished in your annual report and the reporting required for initiatives including the UK's Envirowise Key Performance Indicators and the Australian National Packaging Covenant. Other data is easily available from invoices, Bill of Materials, cost centres and the like by your Accounts Department. Where data may not be held by yourself e.g. rating of company cars, the mechanism for sourcing such information is detailed and is available via the internet. In many of the questions, you will be reporting percentage changes only, thus allowing calculation on a product, per kg or per tonne basis depending on the methodologies of your organisation. This provides additional flexibility in information gathering. 

This section explains why the retailer has implemented Four Leaf, the methodology and benefits along with frequently asked questions.