I would love to continue a discussion we have had in person at different times regarding "ethical" or "responsible" consumerism...Here are a few websites and some thoughts from one...look forward to hearing back...
http://www.responsibleshopper.org/
http://www.mrandersen.com/2consumers/responsible_consumer.pdf
http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/philosophy/riserise.htm
http://www.fespinal.com/espinal/english/visua/en116.htm
“For the last 30 years or so, multinational corporations have been trying to shape the decisions of elected governments to fit their vision of a global free market. And whilst governments have in most cases been pretty obliging, it is the ordinary people that buy their products who haven’t been so convinced. The corporate vision of a morally barren future where only the strong survive and where money is the only measure of value, was hardly going to meet with universal acclaim. But the scale of opposition from a new wave of ethical consumers has somewhat taken companies aback.
Survey after survey has shown that it isn’t just a small minority of eccentrics who understand the need for corporate ethics but between 40 and 70% of all consumers. And whilst there is still a very long way to go to translate these good intentions into markets where 70% of all products are sold as ethical, hardly a week goes by without some progress being made.
Of course, most consumers don’t talk in terms of globalisation or international competitiveness, they just boycott products or write angry letters saying I’ve heard your company is cruel to animals or responsible for toxic pollution. And it is on this level, addressing the actual details about the way each product is made that companies have few answers other than to look embarrassed, prevaricate or try to obscure the issues.
The key movers in galvanising consumers to act, and in providing the detail that companies would rather you didn’t know, have been single-issue pressure groups like Greenpeace and PETA1. The animal testing and environmental lobbies which blazed the trail of corporate campaigning in the late 1980s have now been joined by powerful Third World ‘development’ organisations. We are already fast approaching the situation where it is unusual to find a pressure group without some kind of ‘consumer awareness campaign’ aimed at influencing corporate behaviour.
The last piece of the jigsaw is filled by companies which market their products as ethical or green. Many of these ethical marketing claims have been rightly pilloried as cynical or misleading but there is a core of companies whose intentions are genuine. And although there is a huge variety of approaches, from the reluctant multinational displaying an eco-label to an outspoken campaigner like the Body Shop, each of these companies is in some sense an ally with campaigners in their field. Boundaries are further blurred between campaign groups and companies when Greenpeace promotes eco-fridges or Oxfam markets fair trade products. As a result, campaigners are learning that although it is easy to lambast the self-proclaimed ethical company caught out completing a less than ethical deal, it is better in the long run to focus their energies on those companies - and there are still many - which refuse to accept that ethics have any role to play in the way they run their business.”
