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Quick guide to Ethical Consumer

Ethics made easy. See our quick guide to help you get the best out of our web tools. 

Shopping Guide Score Tables

At your fingertips are more than 100 Shopping Guides, on products and services from bread to bank accounts, each with a score table of ethical ratings, best buy recommendations, and a written product report with links and references.

On the score table each product we've reviewed is rated from 0 - 100 marks.

Table scores and stories

You can see the score for each product in the circle next to the brand / company name. 

In the column to the right you can click on one of the category names to see the stories that help make up the score in each category. 

sample score table from our bookshops guide

0 is the worst possible rating, and 100 is the best. 

We're currently updating our scoring system and have two systems running in parallel. 

In the new rating the score is calculated by how it rates against our 5 core ethical rating categories plus bespoke ratings of individual markets e.g. materials in the clothing sector.

In the old rating the score is calculated by how it rates against 19 rating categories.

In both systems our ethical ratings are of the whole company behind the brand, not just the brand. So a vegetarian product may get marked down in the Animal Rights category because the company that owns it also makes meat products.

After all, isn’t it better to buy a cruelty-free product from a company that doesn’t test its other items on animals, or recycled toilet paper from a firm that isn’t cutting down virgin forests for its other ranges?

A company-based approach allows consumers to influence decisions company wide. It also highlights those firms that try and promote themselves as ethical, while at the same time being involved in activities that might concern many customers.

Company pages

Delve deeper into our data by clicking on the 'Company Profile' link on the Score table.

This will take you to a company page where you can see in more detail how we have rated a product, find out more about company ownership, other brands from that company and other related guides. 

Email and Tweet a company

On this page you can also email or tweet a company to let them know that you will (or won't be buying their products). This is an important part of being an ethical consumer as you can let a company know that ethics is driving sales and helps reinforce good company behaviour (or challenge bad behaviour).

Join us on YouTube

We have a number of short introductory videos about ethical shopping, ethical products, and longer videos looking at specific issues like fast fashion and boycotts.

Join us over on our YouTube channel to watch our latest videos and learn more about ethical shopping.

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