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.

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!