Celebrating 30 Years of Ethical Consumer

January 2020 is not a particularly comfortable time to be reflecting on the onward march of social and environmental values.

In the UK particularly, our collective political systems seem paralysed in the face of the rise of the far-right and the ever-louder drumbeat of climate change. And sometimes it can seem like we are living in end times, or at a point where serious breakdowns appear imminent.

What’s been achieved?

In 1989, a core aspiration was to normalise the simple idea that it makes sense to think about ethics when you buy something. Although it may seem hard to believe now, at that time there was not much of this kind of thinking around and there was even open hostility from some economists that any good would come from it.

Measured against that simple goal, progress looks pretty good. For example:

• Boycotting and positive buying is now the third most frequently practised political activity after voting and signing a petition.
  
   
• Fairtrade and organic movements have spread around the world. Less warmly embraced, but very widely adopted, are more corporate-friendly sustainability schemes like FSC (timber) and MSC (fish).
  
   
• When we started, two companies that we knew of in the UK had issued environmental reports. Hundreds of thousands of companies now do it.
  
   
• Governments have encouraged ethical buying by requiring actions like energy efficiency labelling and reporting on modern slavery.

Of course, Ethical Consumer remains just a tiny part of a global movement calling for a more ethical approach to economic decisions generally.



Other key players number in the thousands around the word and include ethical investors and lenders, ethical manufacturers and sellers, and, of course, the social and environmental campaign groups that often drive the process forward.

But Ethical Consumer remains a unique and critical piece of the jigsaw. Few others occupy the space that we do with our focus on engaging ordinary shoppers.



We are a constant reminder to businesses that there are people out there who may wish to support them in their ethical decisions, or indeed to boycott them for their unethical ones. We are also a reminder to consumers that they are not alone in caring about more than the bottom line

What remains to be done?

Although ethical buying ideas are much more widespread, there are huge chunks of economic activity for which it is still an anathema. 

These include giant monopolies like Amazon, large parts of Wall Street, much commodity trading around the world, and indeed many ordinary consumers.

Our annual review of the size of the UK ethical market usually calculates it to be around 5-10% of all consumer activity (though it is bigger in certain sectors).

If it took 30 years to get to 10%, then we’re certainly not moving fast enough to convert the whole economy to ethical production in time to address some of the more urgent problems that lie ahead. And, as we noted in the opening paragraph, these are worrying times for our wider political and economic systems.

Buying ethically, however, was never meant to be a panacea and, since 1989, we have continually emphasised that “it is not a replacement for other forms of political action but an important additional way for people to exert their influence.” The emergence of Extinction Rebellion is, notably in this context, breathing new life into non-violent direct action. 

However, it is hard to see how buying ethically will not form a key part of the sustainable future ahead. Nor indeed is it easy to envisage how we can get to that destination without it. Ethical buying campaigns can, after all, function whether or not the governments of the day support them. 

Ethical buying may also be able to help reform the very institutions (profit-seeking firms) that organise production within the systems we have.

And, like capitalism itself, buying ethically is dynamic and capable of changing fast to address new issues. In the future, for example, it is clear that the new technologies of robotics and AI, particularly in the hands of profitseeking corporations, are going to throw up many difficult ethical issues.

It is almost certain that the ethical buying campaigns of the future will be engaged in trying to introduce some kind of moral framework around the developments that occur.

There are also instructive lessons from the past in how consumer boycotts can play an important role in ostracising more extreme political views.

Stop Funding Hate’s UK campaign to pressure advertisers to stop advertising in those UK newspapers which have openly racist agendas is just one, more recent, but very encouraging example.

As we wrote in our 20th birthday issue in 2009:

“We cannot predict what lies ahead. What we do know is that promoting informed discussion about what constitutes an ethical choice in every market offers a form and context to identify the common good and collaborate in its attainment.”

Here’s to the next thirty years!