Ethical consumerism (alternatively called ethical consumption, ethical purchasing, moral purchasing, ethical sourcing, ethical shopping or green consumerism) is a type of consumer activism that's based on the concept of dollar voting. It is practiced through 'positive buying' in that ethical products are favoured, or 'moral boycott', that is negative purchasing and company-based purchasing.
The term "ethical consumer", now used generically, was first popularised by the UK magazine the Ethical Consumer, first published in 1989. Ethical Consumer magazine's key innovation was to produce 'ratings tables,' inspired by the criteria-based approach of the then emerging ethical investment movement. Ethical Consumer's ratings tables awarded companies negative marks (and from 2005 overall scores) across a range of ethical and environmental categories such a 'animal rights', 'human rights' and 'pollution and toxics', empowering consumers to make ethically informed consumption choices and providing campaigners with reliable information on corporate behaviour. Such criteria-based ethical and environmental ratings have subsequently become a commonplace both in providing consumer information and in business-to-business corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings such as those provided by Innovest, Calvert, Domini, IRRC, TIAA-CREF and KLD Analytics. Today, Bloomberg and Reuters even provide "environmental, social and governance" ratings direct to the financial data screens of hundreds of thousands of stock market traders. The not-for-profit Ethical Consumer Research Association continues to publish Ethical Consumer magazine and its associated website, which provides free access to ethical ratings tables.
Read more about Ethical Consumerism: Positive Buying, Areas of Concern, Boycott, Research, Tax Choice, Criticism
Famous quotes containing the words ethical and/or consumerism:
“Criminals are never very amusing. It’s because they’re failures. Those who make real money aren’t counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.”
—Orson Welles (1915–1985)
“Parents have railed against shelters near schools, but no one has made any connection between the crazed consumerism of our kids and their elders’ cold unconcern toward others. Maybe the homeless are not the only ones who need to spend time in these places to thaw out.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)