Mind the gap: 21st century crimes of fashion

A couple of days ago I was starting to wonder why I had bothered with this ethical shopping malarkey – did it really matter? Does anyone really care? And then the news of Gap using child labourers hit the press. Well, for a start ‘labourers’ is a bit of a stretch of the word, it seems more like slavery to me. But, for me this news just confirming my beliefs. It proved to me that we need to make a stand against this. This is not acceptable in this day and age. I, like many people, sponsor a child to be in school so she doesn’t have to work. How many people are sending off their donations to educate former child labourers but then spend more on a pair of jeans from Gap? Its time we all started to think about where are clothes, not just our food, comes from. I think its time for fair trade clothes to become as common as fair trade bananas.

Christmas badgering and ethical Christmas presents

Yes, it’s that time of year again; the adverts have started on TV and Christmas is only a matter of weeks away. This Christmas will be a little tricky for me if I’m going to keep up my ethical shopping thing (which by the way, has been going for 8 ½ weeks with only one little slip when I bought a Christmas present from Play.com). So, ethical presents. Well, really if I’m going to be spending money on stuff then I want it to really do some good which is why some of my friends will be receiving badgers for Christmas! Not real badgers of course, toy badgers from Secret World Wildlife Rescue. These adorable badger toys are free when you adopt a badger. These adoptions help pay for the care and protection of real life badgers. With the government still dragging its heels about stopping the badger culling (a reactive response to farmers complaining about bovine tuberculosis) despite all the evidence that it culling actually increases the spread of bTB, badgers need all of the help they can get.

Can you have an ethical or responsible holiday?

You may have noticed that I haven’t posted for a while. Well, the reason is that I’ve been away on holidays and before you start about carbon emissions from flying – I didn’t fly! I went to Wales which is just a few hours drive from my home (here in Southern England). Now, I do believe that carbon emissions from flying is a major contribution to climate change and I do think that people really should try to reduce the amount they fly but I don’t think all flights should be grounded and no one should fly anywhere, ever again. This extremist attitude has been widely publicised by certain individuals but tourism plays a major role in the economies of many countries and well organised tourism can be carefully managed so its impacts are minimised and its benefits are maximised. For example, the wildlife reserves of Africa probably wouldn’t be protecting their wildlife is tourism didn’t pay for their anti poaching patrols. So, by taking a holiday where you money benefits local conservation projects, employs local people and your accommodation tries to be as environmentally friendly as they can, you can actually have an ethical holiday. Generally, mass tourism is bad for everyone except the tour operator: tourists don’t see or understand the country they are in and all the profits head out of the host country. So, this is why I went to Wales, stayed in a tiny lodge on a farm and bought lots of food from little restaurants and not big American fast food chains. If you need any help with ethical holidays check out responsibletravel.com which collects holidays that try to help the local community and the environment.