Consuming With A Conscience
The Age
Friday March 14, 2008
When shopping, how can you be sure that you're not supporting practices that you don't like, such as animal testing or cheap labour? Miranda Ramsay looks at the ethics of consuming.
MILLIONS of people overseas, including children, work long hours in horrifying conditions to produce goods for Australians. Their working conditions are often dangerous, they are often physically abused, and their pay barely covers their basic needs.What you buy and where you buy from shapes how ethical you are as a consumer. Ethical consuming means buying products that are made without harming the environment, animals or people.Understanding the ramifications of what you buy can be tricky, as the entire lifecycle of a product should be considered, including its production process, packaging, transportation and disposal.Three elements are contributing to growth in Australia's demand for ethical products - better consumer awareness, changing values of consumers, and voting with the wallet to change unethical corporate behaviour.Ultimately, responsibility for trading ethically lies with manufacturers and retailers. However, it is often up to consumers to make the running and force retailers to behave. As consumers, we have a responsibility to be ethical and select brands that meet our ideals.Consider how you buy before considering what you buy.Shopping with a conscience will help you see the connection with the environment and with other people and cultures. With each choice, you can minimise your impact.So, stoke the fires of social responsibility and ask yourself these questions: ? Do I really need this product?- What is it made of?- How was it made?- How often will I use it?- What will happen to it when I throw it away? Does getting rid of it harm the environment?- Can it be reused, recycled, bartered or borrowed?- Has it been produced and traded in line with my values?- Was the product tested on animals?- Was the product made using cheap or child labour?- Is the product made from recycled materials?Every dollar you spend on more sustainable products decreases the demand for unsustainable products.You are effectively voting with your wallet, and every vote helps change the actions of unethical companies.If you want to know if what you are buying is ethically sound, check the label and do some research.While the intention to shop ethically is laudable, putting it into practice is often harder.Buying Fairtrade is a good place to start. The Fairtrade Foundation began in the Netherlands in 1986 with a promise to make sure that farmers in the developing world receive fair pay for their crops.Although Fairtrade has been most successful with the coffee bean industry, the ethos is taking hold in other industries. More and more people are choosing to buy Fairtrade chocolate, for example, especially after learning that the Ivory Coast and Ghana - the world's largest cocoa producers - were recently found guilty by the United Nations of exporting cocoa that had been processed by enslaved children. Given that the Ivory Coast produces more than 40% of the world's cocoa, there's a good chance that much of the chocolate sold in Australia has been produced by child labour. Given that Australians are keen chocolate eaters, we are well placed to force change. The answer is simple. Next time you want to nurse your chocoholic tendencies, buy Fairtrade chocolate such as Jasper Fairtrade, Cocolo or Green & Blacks instead of a Mars Bar or Milky Bar. If everyone did so, big firms such as Mars and Nestle would soon see the picture.The concept of Fairtrade in Australia is also slowly influencing the fashion industry. More than 300,000 people - mainly women - in the Australian textile industry are paid as little as $3 an hour to sew clothes. To overcome that, the website fairwear.org.au endorses companies that sign their code of practice which seeks to extinguish such exploitation. Companies such as Hunter Gatherer, Yakka and Collette Dinnigan have signed the Fairwear Homeworkers Code of Practice. Companies such as Lisa Ho, Lush, Ojay and Scanlan & Theodore are blacklisted for either using materials made under sweatshop conditions, not being open about their manufacturing process, or not signing the code.More and more ethical brands are popping up and proving that responsible buying can be fashionable.Melbourne-based clothing label Skin and Threads was formed in 2006 with an aim to show shoppers that being environmentally aware, ethical and fashionable go hand in hand.In the cosmetics industry, a company's philosophy shapes the products it makes. A company driven solely by profit is more likely to use ingredients that harm the environment, are cheaper and which have perhaps been tested on animals. Fortunately, more and more manufacturers are choosing a more sustainable approach. The Body Shop pioneered ethical cosmetics in the late 1970s by adopting a no animal-testing policy and using ingredients for some products from community trade programs.Nowadays, companies such as Jurlique have gone further by producing plant-based products that are not tested on animals, are free from animal content, and are packaged in recyclable materials.Skincare company Aesop also scores points for ethical trading.Many of its products are packaged in glass bottles that are easily recycled. And some of skincare company Aveda's packaging is made with recycled HDPE plastic with recycled cardboard for its outer packaging.Ethical consumers are increasingly attracted to organisations that offer products and services with a positive message. Oxfam, for example, offers gift vouchers for such things as goats or water tanks for impoverished communities in developing countries. Such gifts give twice, first to the recipient of the voucher, and second to the recipients of the goods.There are many ways that our consumption can be positive rather than negative. Next time you search the internet, for example, try Yahoo's www.goodsearch.com search engine which lets you raise money for a chosen cause every time you search. It's an Americanbased idea that will perhaps gain traction with Australian-based internet companies soon. Good Search helps charities and schools by donating 50% of its revenue from advertisers to the charities chosen by its users.There are some obstacles in the way of ethical consuming. First, many consumers focus on specific markets - such as Fairtrade coffee or chocolate - but don't apply the same ethical code to their other shopping. In short, consumers might behave ethically with one product, but not with another.It doesn't help that Australian consumers have trouble finding Australian brands that meet ethical and sustainable trading guidelines.Secondly, the potential exists for ethical consuming to be a passing fad. Thirdly, companies often do the least required by law to comply with ethical trading. The sooner they realise that public opinion is more potent than the letter of the law, the better.These days, the true value of a product you buy cannot be de- fined just by how much it costs, but by the value you place on minimising your personal involvement with unethical and unsustainable trading.Perhaps we all need to shift from being passive consumers to taking a more active part in the entire retail process. "Prosuming", not just consuming, might just be a trend that lasts.LINKS www.alv.org.au www.biome.com.au www.choosecrueltyfree.org.au www.clothingexchange.com.au www.ecobuy.org.au www.ejfoundation.org www.ethicalconsumer.org www.fairgotrading.com.au www.fairwear.org.au www.fta.org.au www.oxfam.org.au www.skinandthreads.com www.slf.org.au www.stylewithsoul.com.au www.worldvision.com.au
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