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Ethical Buying

Ethical buying is generally defined as buying a product or service whilst taking into account its environmental impact both during manufacture and its lifecycle as well as the ethical performance of the maker or service provider.

It is not the same as Ethical consumerism which is the practice of boycotting products that a consumer believes to be associated with unnecessary exploitation or other unethical behaviour.

However, the two concepts can be combined to form a powerful ethical approach to consumerism.

Ethical Buying - ways to do it.

There are a number of ways in which you can practice ethical buying:

1. Positive buying is the favouring of ethical products, be they fair trade, organic or cruelty free. In this way, you can directly support ethical companies and this may be the best way of voting with your wallet!

2. Negative buying means avoiding the products or services of companies that engage in unethical practices such as those with poor human or anumal rights records or those that pollute the environment.

3. Company-based buying is the targeting of a particular business and all it's subsidiaries for boycott.

4. Fully Screened Approach is a combination of all three ethical buying methods and involves examining the product and the company that makes it in your eveluation of an ethical brand.

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: