Understanding Trust Cards
A detailed anatomy of the Trust Card: defensibility summary, evidence chips, the claim-suitability pill, and the freshness indicator.
What the Trust Card is for
The Trust Card is CarbSet's signature component. It turns a quality assessment into something you can read quickly, interrogate deeply, and cite externally. This article dissects the full card (Layer 2 and its evidence layer) so you can use every part of it with confidence.
All quality assessments on CarbSet are currently provisional. This means scores have not yet been independently verified by an external assessor. A Provisional badge is shown wherever a grade appears.
Anatomy of the full Trust Card
The full Trust Card on a listing detail page contains, from top to bottom: the grade badge and composite score, the five scored dimensions, a defensibility summary, evidence chips, a claim-suitability pill, and a freshness indicator. Below the card, an expandable evidence layer holds the per-dimension source links.
The defensibility summary
The defensibility summary is a short passage in plain language that explains, in words, why the credit earned its grade. It names the strengths worth relying on and the weaknesses worth watching, so a reader who does not want to parse five numbers still leaves with an accurate impression. Think of it as the analyst's note attached to the score. It is written to help you defend, or reconsider, a purchase decision.
The evidence chip system
Evidence chips are compact markers showing that a claim is backed by a source. Each chip signals that evidence exists for a particular dimension or attribute, and selecting through to the evidence layer takes you to the actual links. Chips keep the card scannable while making it obvious where evidence is present and, just as usefully, where it is thin. A dimension with no chip is telling you something: the support for that score is weaker.
The claim-suitability pill
The claim-suitability pill tells you what kind of claim a credit is appropriate for. This is one of the most practically important parts of the card, because a credit that is fine for one purpose can be misleading for another. There are five states.
| Suitability | Use it for |
|---|---|
| corporate_net_zero | Contributions to a formal corporate net zero commitment, where the highest scrutiny applies. |
| internal_carbon_price | Backing an internal carbon price or shadow-pricing programme within an organisation. |
| voluntary_offset | General voluntary offsetting, the default for most individual and lower-stakes purchases. |
| compliance_adjacent | Contexts sitting close to a regulatory or compliance scheme, where extra caution is warranted. |
| not_recommended | A credit that should not be used to support a public offset claim. Treat this as a clear warning. |
Match the credit to the claim you intend to make. Using a credit marked not_recommended for a public net zero statement is exactly the kind of overreach that leads to greenwashing accusations.
The freshness indicator
Quality is not static. A project can be re-verified, downgraded after a controversy, or updated as new monitoring data arrives. The freshness indicator shows how recent the current assessment is, so you can judge whether the score still reflects reality. An older assessment is not automatically wrong, but it deserves a closer look at the evidence layer before you rely on it. As assessments age, CarbSet escalates how prominently this is flagged.
The evidence layer
Beneath the card, the evidence layer lists the specific links behind each of the five dimensions. This is where a journalist, researcher, auditor, or careful buyer follows a score back to its source. It is the difference between a rating you are asked to trust and one you can check. Because current scores are provisional, this layer is the most valuable part of the card: it lets you form your own view rather than relying on an unverified grade.
Reading the card as a whole
Use the card in order. Start with the grade, read the defensibility summary for the story, scan the dimensions and chips for strengths and gaps, check the claim-suitability pill against your intended use, note the freshness, then open the evidence layer for anything that matters to your decision.