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What's the better option when shopping?

This post originally appeared on the community blog at Alice.com, which promises that you'll never run out of toilet paper again. A special thanks to Rebecca Thorman for the opportunity.

Green is hot. It's cool. It's now.

Organic is sexy. It's trendy. It's hip.

All-natural is in demand. Fair trade is well known. And shopping local is shopping chic.

Very quickly, our world as consumers has been turned upside down as we search for monikers and titles that aim to make our purchases better than the ones we made yesterday, buying products that are anything but ordinary. But how can we know if a product is good - not just in terms of what it can do for us, but in terms of how it was made? And what good products are really worth it when our dollars are stretched tighter by the day?

Titles and descriptions on packaging are helpful, but unless we're willing to do some undercover investigative work, we may be easily led astray by a product or a company's claims as to how green, organic or beneficial their wares may be. So what's a shopper to do?

Here are three labels you usually see brandished on many products in your kitchen or bathroom:

Fair trade
Fair trade products are those that have been approved or certified by Trans Fair, the only such certifier in the USA. They have strict guidelines as to what can and cannot by labeled as fair trade. What was once reserved for coffee, tea and chocolate, however, can now apply to flowers, wine and sporting goods.

Recycled
There is no standardization of this term. Some things (like toilet paper, napkins and books) have some post-consumer recycled content. Others may have 20% recycled content. Or 50%. Or 100%. At least you can look for the familiar triple-arrow-triangle symbol to make sure that at least the entire product isn't made from virgin fibers.

Organic
The USDA has a program to approve certain foodstuffs as organic. But, be careful - the adjective 'organic' can be used freely. The USDA label will ensure that what you're buying has met certain standards. Then again, some food won't qualify, as smaller producers may not want to jump through certain hoops.

The list could go on. We could talk about what makes a product "all-natural" (nothing, really) or which attribute is best (should I buy a shirt that's made from organic cotton or recycled plastic bottles?). Sometimes, trying to figure out the 'best' product is nothing but a wild goose chase. Speaking of geese, if you'd like one for the holidays, you could get a free-range one. Or a cage-free. Or a hormone-free. Or....

Bottom line: read labels. They may be hiding something, they may be shouting something, but they're all worth looking into. In a capitalist world, our dollars have power, and what we choose to buy (or boycott) has the potential to shape entire industries, if not companies.

And, if you've never tasted an organic tomato, wiped with recycled TP, supported a local artist, sipped shade-grown coffee, bathed in a low-flow showerhead or shared some fair trade chocolate with a loved one, now's the time. Because while it's difficult to say what's best when it comes to cause-related labeling, we can all at least know what's better than the ordinary.