The Ethical Shopper
Money makes the world go round, and deciding how we spend our money might just save it.
Awareness of global poverty, animal welfare and green issues are at an all time high. If we can carry this awareness into our shopping basket, we can all work together to help make the world a better place.
Just like religion, ethics aren't universal, and what may be important to one person, may not be as important to another. To the ethical consumer, their money is a vote which they use every time they go shopping.
The vote in your pocket
- Food and goods in the UK are relatively cheap at the moment. But while we might be saving money, there's always a cost somewhere down the line.
- Buying cheap clothes which have been made in sweatshops is a vote for worker exploitation. Buying a gas guzzling 4X4, especially if you are a city dweller, is a vote for climate change.
- Factory farmed animals, meanwhile, may make cheap meat but it comes at a price on the quality of life of the animal. When it comes to supermarkets, the cost can be to our high streets and local shops.
- Even small, everyday purchases, such as coffee, tea, breakfast cereal, bread or bin-bags are a vote for something. Favouring organic produce is a vote for environmental sustainability and fairtrade, a vote for human rights.
- Considering ethical issues when we go shopping means taking impacts like this into account.
Making your vote count
It's often easy to get overwhelmed by the scale of the problem and by the number of changes that you could make. This is where Ethical Consumer comes in.
By pulling together and evaluating all the different kinds of advice and information that we get from campaigners and companies, we can present clear conclusions about the best options to take. Small steps can lead to bigger ones, and it's better to take a few small steps than no steps at all.
As consumers, we have a great deal of power in our pockets. Just look at how the supermarkets and food companies responded on the issue of genetically modified food. Even the threat of withdrawing our custom can, and already has, changed company policy.
Sometimes the choices aren't straightforward - is it better to buy organic vegetables flown in from overseas, or non-organic vegetables from a local farmer? In these cases, you often have to decide which is more important to you right now.
We often discuss these kinds of dilemmas in the magazine, and where we can, give guidance. It's also important to realise that sometimes, there is no one right answer.
Four types of ethical buying
Ethical consumerism is just as much about supporting the 'good' companies and products as it is withdrawing our support from the 'bad' ones.
- Positive Buying:This means favouring particular ethical products, such as energy saving lightbulbs.
- Negative Purchasing:This means avoiding products that you disapprove of, such as battery eggs or gas-guzzling cars.
- Company-Based Purchasing: This means targeting a business as a whole and avoiding all the products made by one company. For example, the Nestle boycott has targeted all its brands and subsidiaries in a bid to get the company to change the way it markets its baby milk formula across the world.
- Fully-Screened Approach: This means looking both at companies and at products and evaluating which product is the most ethical overall.