What is etheco?
A free ethical and eco-friendly shopping engine.
We want to help you make informed purchasing choices based on the ethical issues that are important to you, including human rights, environmental issues and social justice.
We'll help you make those choices with our magical (but very clever and technical) good goods finder.
Help & support - fill in our survey.
Ethical Living Links:
Ethical Buying - what is it?
Carbon Footprint
What is a 'carbon footprint'?
Your Carbon Footprint is most simply defined as a measure of the impact that your activities or lifestyle has on the environment in terms of the amount of green house gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide.
How do I cause a Carbon Footprint?
The following activities can affect the carbon footprint of an individual:
1. Car travel and other motorised transport:
Cars and other internal combustion engine vehicles rely on fossil fuels for power. Burning of fossil fuels creates carbon Dioxide as a by-product.
The amount of Carbon Dioxide produced depends on the distance driven, the fuel efficiency of the vehicle, the number of passengers, and the manner in which the vehicle is driven. Poor driving habits can greatly increase your fuel consumption.
2. Air travel:
the amount of Carbon Dioxide produced during air travel depends on distance and number of flights. Take-off and landing use large amounts of fuel, so two short flights produce more carbon than one long flight of a comparable distance! In other words, short-haul flights have a larger carbon footprint per passenger.
If etheco offered a way to offset your carbon footprint on flights at no charge, would you be interested? Let us know.
3. Electricity use:
Electricity use can add substantially to your carbon footprint if it is being generated from non-renewable sources. Non nuclear power stations producing electricity are usually driven by coal or gas. The burning of both coal and gas produces carbon dioxide as a by product.
Day to day use of domestic appliances powered by electricity all contributes towards your carbon footprint.
4. Home heating:
How you heat your home can make a significant contribution towards your personal carbon footprint.
Both electricity and gas use or generation produce Carbon dioxide as a by product.
You can do something by switching to an energy supplier who uses renewable sources - compare energy suppliers
Ethical purchasing means buying with an awareness of ethical issues such as the effect that your purchase will have on your carbon footprint.
At etheco, we have made this easy for you with our 'etheco rating'. We're concerned about how hard it can be to find out how ethical a product is, so we've done something about it.
We rate products and services for both their environmental performance and the ethical performance of their manufacturer, then combine those two scores to make our own unique etheco rating.
The etheco rating is represented as a percentage - the higher the percentage, the more ethical the product.
We also hope, in the near future to build our own Carbon footprint calculator to help you achieve a more ethical lifestyle.
If you would like to see a Carbon Footprint calculator on this site, please register your interest, perhaps by completing our user survey or by telling us through our contact page.