About Affordability + Environment Ordering

We have defined this lens as a weighting of certain attributes as follows for each class of products:

Scroll to the bottom of the page for a technical discussion of what these numbers represent.

Affordability attribute weights
Category Attribute Weight
Cabinets
Factory Distance 40%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Carpet
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by square feet 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Caulks / Adhesives
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by oz 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Coatings
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by gal 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Countertops
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by square feet 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Doors
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price Doors 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Erosion Control
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by square feet 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Fixtures
Factory Distance 35%
Flow Rate 50%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 5%
Flooring + Tile
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by square feet 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Foundation
Factory Distance 40%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Frame, Linear
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by ft 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Insulation
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price Insulation 15%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
R Value / in 5%
Mechanicals
Factory Distance 50%
Found Price General 10%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Permeable Surfaces
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by square feet 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Power Generation
Factory Distance 40%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Rainwater Harvesting
Factory Distance 40%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Roofing / Siding
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by square feet 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Sheet Goods
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by square feet 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
SIPs
Factory Distance 50%
Found Price General 20%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Toilets
Factory Distance 30%
Flow per Flush 50%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 10%
Trim
Factory Distance 40%
Found Price by ft 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Urinals
Factory Distance 20%
Flow per Flush 50%
Found Price General 20%
Recycled Content (PC) 10%
Water Heating
Factory Distance 40%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
Windows
Air Leakage 10%
Factory Distance 20%
Maintenance Cost 10%
Recycled Content (PC) 30%
U Value 30%

Theory

Products are ordered in relation to their peers, where peers are all the products meeting your search criteria. If you search for roofing insulation, the peer group in which those insulations will be compared will be smaller than the same product ordered against all of the core and shell insulations. We use relative orderings to provide a descision making tool that can function in the absense of verified environmental and performance data, such as a certified test for the R value of a product.

Each attribute has a calculation associated with it that returns a score from 0 to 1 for a given product relative to it's current peer products. A 1 does not ensure that the product is even particularly good in the area the attribute measures, only that it is the best of its peer group in that area. The lenses we use to present ordered products, such as the lens presented above, are a collection of weights to apply to certain attributes to get an overall score from 0 to 1. It is this score which determines the display order of the product.

Throughout this process, Green2Green works hard to avoid drawing false conclusions. First and foremost in this effort is the handling of uncertainy in the system. As the calcuation of a product's relative ordering score is performed, along with the score we carry along the uncertainy of that score; for instance 0.7 out of 1 plus or minus 0.15 or 15%. This uncertainy can come from the particular source of the data. We also automatically add uncertainty as the data ages; a value entered a year ago has more uncertainy than the one entered this month. At the end of the ordering calculation, scores with more than 20% uncertainty are thrown out. This means that depending on what lens you are ordering products with, a product may simply not show up at all, because the system can not determine its ordering with less than 20% uncertainty. It depends on the value system, because the more heavily a particular value system weights a certain attribute, the more uncertainty in that attribute will cause uncertainty in the entire score.