Yesterday, I actually bought something, but it wasn’t for me

I went into a proper shop yesterday, not a charity shop and bought something. But I can still justify it. It wasn’t a chain store or a franchise but a small independent toy shop and I bought a little notebook and pen. Plus it wasn’t for me. I’m going to post the notebook and pen (along with a couple of jumpers) to the small girl I sponsor in Nepal. Well, I’m going to post it to the charity help2educate who run the hostel where the girl stays. Help2Educate is a great charity that helps children out of child labour jobs and funds their education so that they can lead a better life. Perhaps, if I can save enough money with this ethical shopping of mine (so far I have spent very little money) then I will be able to afford to go to Nepal and visit her in person.

Can you have an ethical wedding?

I went to a wedding on the weekend, a very nice wedding with the bride in a white dress with flowers, a buffet and a lovely reception but I could help but think ‘is this ethical?’ Can you have a wedding where the impact on the environment isn’t huge and small children in less developed countries weren’t paid a pittance to make the dresses? Well, I found the answer. Ethical weddings is a website that lists suppliers of various wedding essential which are all organic, fair-trade or environmentally sustainable or ethical in some way. It’s nice to think that even on a day famed for being extravagant can actually care too.

Ethical electricity, supporting conservation and a free DVD!

It’s been two and a half weeks of my ethical shopping lifestyle and so far it’s going really well. Apart from the usual essential bread and milk runs to the local shop, I have only bought veg from the farmshop down the road, fair-trade tea bags from Oxfam, and a t-shirt and CD from a charity shop. I must be saving a lot of money doing this. As I have to justify to myself that everything I buy is benefiting a small local business or charity (rather than a chain or franchise) I am questioning whether I actually need the things I buy or not. So far I haven’t needed to buy much food as I have squirrel tendencies and like to stock pile food so I’m yet to see how hard that’s going to be.

If I’m going to take this low impact ethical lifestyle seriously, I’ve decided that I need to do something about my energy use. I already use energy saving bulbs and turn my TV off at the wall at night but I’m also going to switch supplier. I’ve found this great offer from ecotricity with WWF. If you sign up to ecotricity they’ll donate £15 to WWF and send you a copy of ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ on DVD. Sounds like a great deal to me!

Ethical gifts and guilt free shopping

On a lighter note, I’ve been doing some browsing and I have found some great websites that are run by charities which sell some great stuff. One of my favourite online charity shops is the RSPB. They sell loads of things from bird books to clothes, household items and some great gift ideas. At the moment they are promoting their Sumatra campaign and I think the best way to support this campaign to raise awareness about the biodiversity under threat in Sumatra is by buying this lovely little Sumatran tiger soft toy.

Another one of my favourites is the Born Free shop. Born Free is a wildlife charity with lots of very worthwhile campaigns and some great products on sale. WWF, one of the most famous wildlife charities also has a shop and they also sell some great stuff like this ladybird tea set.

As you can probably tell, I do like to support wildlife charities but if you have a particular fondness of a people based charity or dog based charity or pretty much any type of charity you will be able to find a charity that you want to support on the Charity Gifts website. Here you can buy almost anything and chose which charity you want to support.

I know people often talk about retail therapy, but I have always found that spending money makes me feel bad because there are so many better things that I could do with my cash but this kind of shopping really makes me feel good – not only do you help some really worthwhile charities but you get some really cool stuff too!

These kinds of website are going to be the only way I’m going to cope with this ethical shopping campaign of mine!

Disposable items when landfills are running out

One of my pet hates is disposable items. I personally don’t see what’s wrong with using something more than once! There are so many disposable products these days it seems totally inappropriate when we are all striving towards ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ and when we all know that we’re rapidly running out of landfill space. So, you can image my dismay when I read last night in Metro (another of my pet hates - free newspapers) about disposable rocket launchers. For a start weapons manufacturing encourages war and conflict and the money spent on them by governments should be used to fight famine, invest in education, healthcare and whole host of more needy departments but disposable weapons? That seems to be a complete contradiction of everything the government seems to be working towards. I can’t help but wonder if these weapons will be included in the electrical waste legislation WEEE where the manufacturer or retailer is responsible for recycling the product when it has come to the end of its lifespan. I do hope so otherwise this is a blatant disregard for the environment and makes a mockery of all the efforts of every other industry that’s at least trying to be more environmentally friendly.

The trouble with buying ethical food…

So far I’ve been doing this ethical spending thing for just over a week and I’ve been pretty good. I have bought a t-shirt from a charity shop and that’s been it apart from food. But food is where I’m really struggling. I went out to dinner the other night and went to my local pub that I can walk to. Great so far, no pollution from travel costs and supporting my local business but they didn’t say if any of the food was local or organic and had actually labelled their lamb as from New Zealand. Now personally, I really don’t like food that’s travelled more than I have, so I really resent food from the other side of the world, especially considering the fuel costs involved. But if I travel to a restaurant that sells fair-trade organic food I will have to drive (well, get someone else to drive me) and personally I think that’s worse. So, the stance is I will do my best with food, I’ll buy my tea bags from Oxfam, my veg from the farm shop and try to buy as much organic, fair-trade and local as possible but I’m not going to tie myself in knots over it. It’s just too difficult. So, apart from the food problem it’s going great!

The organic dilemma

I have come across a bit of a problem with things that are organic. Firstly, food. I can go into a supermarket and buy organic apples which also good for the environment they were grown in (which is often the USA or South Africa) really aren’t good in the carbon footprint department. It seems ridiculous to me that major supermarket chains can market these ‘green’ foodstuffs when they have been flown half way round the world. And that not even considering that they are yet another chain. So, I think I’m going to ignore most organic stuff and just try to buy as much as I can from the farmshop down the road. They had strawberries there the other day which were grown just a mile away from my house! Surely it’s more important to support a small local business that to pay over the odds for organic food, wrapped in plastic, from a chain store?

Secondly, I was most annoyed a few weeks ago when the organic dress I bought from a small independent shop in the Brighton lanes was being modelled on a manikin in the window of New Look. For a start I thought I had something a bit more unique that the unusual high street stuff and does that mean that the profits have gone to a New Look supplier? It’s so complicated just trying to buy the right things and there isn’t a labelling system on clothes. For all I know my organic dress could be from a sweat shop and there’s no way to tell. So, back to the charity shops for me. At least with charity shops I’ve saving the clothes from the landfill, donating money to charity and I’m not adding any demand for new clothes.

This isn't going to be easy...

I started this ethical buying spree on Saturday and so far I haven’t bought anything (except train tickets which I can’t live without) and it’s been pretty easy. But I’ve realised that certain things I was planning on buying a few weeks ago, I now can’t. I can’t buy CDs now, unless I can find them in a charity shop (I have a great The Cure album from a charity shop so it is possible). Buying shoes, especially trainers won’t be easy. I’m not too worried about buying clothes as I live in charity shops most of the time anyway and there are some great online charity shops like Oxfam’s generation why. But toiletries? How do I do that? And toothpaste? Most toothpastes are made my big pharmaceutical companies or multinationals so I have to stand my ground on that one but what the alternative? I’m going to need to do some serious research just to keep clean!

And so it begins...

Whilst in London on the weekend, I went to Harrods for the first time in my life and I hated it. It was busy with self indulgent people buying over priced stuff and for what? I know shopping makes people happy but lining the pockets of fat cats really doesn't do it for me. So whilst still wandering the opulent halls of Harrods I vowed that from now on I will only buy stuff that doesn't make those fat cats fatter - I'm only going to buy stuff from charities, thats fair trade or organic. When I say stuff I mean pretty much everything except food. So this blog is my diary so I can vent my difficulties and share my successes! So here goes...