FAQ

According to Wikipedia, ethical consumerism/shopping is: “buying things that are made ethically. Generally, this means without harm to or exploitation of humans, animals or the natural environment”. Whether this can ever be achieved by shopping at a supermarket for goods that are mass produced, as part of a system where profit is the primary motivator, is of course a key question.

It’s worth noting that the goal of the guide is to reach a mainstream audience with some new criteria for purchasing their everyday essentials. Many people use the supermarket and will continue to do so, so we hope to introduce them to some criteria along side ‘cost’ and ‘convenience’ which are the primary motivators of most purchases. I’m the first to admit it is a very ‘light-green’ approach, and we see it as a starting place for people. I suggest that the way to live more ethically is to start to engage with the issues one by one, and then changing your behaviour to reflect a responsible approach. Ultimately this may mean avoiding the supermarket totally, which would be the ideal – right now it is the place we are encouraging people to move towards.

The first step is to ask “Do I need this product?”

The guide’s focus is on company track record. It’s one aspect of the whole picture of a product that is ‘not on the label’. Some of the many criteria to use when seeking for a more ethical purchase are outlined in the centrespread of the guide (and here) and throughout it as information blurbs.

We’d love to more comprehensively cover products and their features, and this is the goal of the wider project. However this is a large task given the huge amount of products – each with various features. We’ve sought to address this with the ‘Outstanding product features’ star – giving a preference; and also pointed out common features for products types. We’re looking for people who are interested in helping in the expansion of the content of the project.

It’s a very simple rating system. We recommend avoiding from companies with a negative record, and then choosing the best of those left. At the most basic level we are simply trying to give people tools to assist in making a better choice – a way of distinguishing a preference. It could be said that such a comparison is comparing ‘apples’ with ‘oranges’, however we encourage users to follow the links to the sources themselves, and make up their own minds. We are working on a system to allow users to choose the sources used and so ‘customise’ the rating to better match what they value.

Unfortunately some large companies seem to rate well, given their resources to put in place sustainability measures. This is a distinct limitation of the methodology. We would recommend buying from smaller, local businesses in preference to larger foreign owned ones.

Our definition of ‘Australian owned’ is more than 50% owned by Australian based organisations. This is related to where the company is registered and where they pay tax. Australian based subsidiaries of foreign owned companies are not ‘Australian-owned’. By supporting Australian owned businesses over foreign-owned, we channel money into the local (Australian) economy rather than overseas. This supports infrastructure here. Additionally operations in Australia are more likely to conform to requirements for fair wages and conditions.

Basically they are the ‘common brands’ found in major retail stores, such as supermarkets.

We haven’t covered house-brands throughout our guide because it’s extremely difficult to find good / comprehensive information on who manufactures specific house-brand products. The best we’ve come across is a general directory, the Private Label Manufacturers Association directory, which is a list of companies and services that fulfill private label requirements. It gives some indication of who the major suppliers are.

If we did list house-brands in our product tables, the same brands would be appearing again and again. Using our current methodology these brands would be listed under Woolworths or Coles (Wesfarmers) and given a ‘cross’ rating. Coles and Woolworths both receive criticisms for owning poker machines. See more on Supermarkets in Australia.

Generally we don’t recommend house-brands as they (1) do not disclose who supplies the product – you don’t know ‘where your dollar is going’, and (2) channel money to the big supermarket chains. Australia has one of the most concentrated grocery markets internationally, with the two top players, Coles and Woolworths, accounting for over 80% of grocery sales in Australia. House-brands are the cheapest option however cheap always comes at a cost to growers (See Four Corners ‘Price that we pay‘, August 2008). We encourage support for local manufacturers where possible.

Sometimes when options are limited, house brands may be the best alternative. If you are buying house brands, and if supporting local manufacturing in Australia or reducing your food miles is important to you, we recommend you check the house brand label to see where it is made and choose ‘Product of Australia’ as best choice, ‘Made in Australia’ as next best, and ‘imported’ as last preference.

We are considering ways to make our position on house-brands clearer.

Any company listed on PETA’s list of “Companies that do test on animals” receive a full criticism.

Any company listed on the cruelty free lists of PETA, Choose Cruelty Free or Leaping Bunny receive a full praise.

Some companies, such as Nivea/Beiersdorf and Coty make claims on their websites like “we do not use animals to test cosmetic products”, but do not appear on any of the cruelty free lists mentioned above.  In these cases we check to see whether the company sells cosmetics in China where cosmetics products must, by law, be tested on animals. If they do, they receive a lesser criticism.

Cosmetics companies often make deliberately misleading claims on their websites, saying their products are ‘not tested on animals’ but fail to mention that they still use animal-tested ingredients. For the companies criticised for this on the Uncaged website, we allocate minor criticisms (does not affect company rating).

Common industry practice in the dairy industry is to send male calves off to slaughter at five days old. This practice has been criticised by animal welfare group and has come into the media of late with RSPCA’s campaigning against an industry proposal to let calves heading for slaughter go unfed as a cost cutting means (Weekly Times, SMH). Find out more details at RSPCA – What happens to Bobby Calves.

Other concerns relate to the removal of calves from their mothers, which is also part of standard industry practice and in the present system essential for dairy production.

We have flagged the bobby calves issue on the product type comparison pages for products that are predominately dairy (butter, cheese, milk, milk power, flavoured milk, yoghurt, ice cream. cottage cheese, cream custard) but have not flagged this as an Industry Alert. We could have gone either way on this but with the goal of introducing issues in a way that allows people to take on one issue at a time and dairy being such a major part of people’s daily foods we have chosen to note it, but not emphasise it as an Industry Alert.

If this issue is important to you, we suggest choosing products from companies that have animal welfare on their agenda, such as Elgaar Farms - a biodynamic farm in Tasmania (see organic standards, and biodynamic standards). See Elgaar Farms response to our email as to their Animal Welfare practices. Another positive alternative is Barambah Organics, based in Queensland, who have a policy that involves keeping all bobby calves.

Of course a great option to avoid the many issues associated with dairy farming is to go dairy free. If you’re thinking about going vegan, remember to pay special attention to getting enough iron, calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin B12 in your diet. Here’s some product alternatives from Animals Australia.

Due to inadequate labeling laws and a lack of comprehensive information on which products contain palm oil, we don’t give criticisms for palm oil use.

It is not always easy to identify products with palm oil. Under Food Standards Australia New Zealand requirements, it is sufficient to have vegetable oil in the list of ingredients on the packet, even though the product contains palm oil. As a rule of thumb, if the saturated fat content is about 50%, there is a good chance that the vegetable oil will in fact be palm oil.

If we added criticisms for all companies who had palm oil in their products, almost every company would get a cross, making it difficult to distinguish between companies on other issues. (For example in margarines, Melrose is the only one that does not have a palm oil derivative).

The only assessment source we use currently in respect to palm oil is a WWF (World Wildlife Fund) report that rates companies relating to their commitments to, and actions on, responsible purchasing of palm oil. You can see the scorecard for European companies here and Australian companies here.

WWF’s Palm Oil fact sheets includes this:

“How do I know if my product contains sustainable palm oil?

The simple answer at the moment is  you don’t!”

The best resource for finding products that don’t contain palm oil is the ‘Helping you buy responsibly’ section on the BOS Australia website at www.orangutans.com.au

Find out more about the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) and its signatories, including Unilever, H.J. Heinz, Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson and Cadbury. See more. Note that the RSPO has been criticised by many groups including Friends of the Earth as a way to make the palm oil industry look ‘responsible’ or ‘sustainable’ without actually reducing deforestation. “…it does not halt the expansion of damaging oil palm plantations and it does not benefit local communities. Basically it fails to deal with the causes of the palm oil problems” – Friends of the Earth International Agrofuels Campaign Coordinator Torry Kuswardono from Indonesia.

The inconsistency here is because our ratings are for the company, whereas Greenpeace are rating by brand. The Greenpeace Canned Tuna Guide was released after the 2010 Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping. Personally we’d recommend you don’t buy tuna at all.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society guide suggests four fish types to look for as more sustainable:

• Whiting (over dory)
• Bream (over flake)
• Flathead (over redfish)
• Calamari (over scallops)

If you must buy tuna we suggest you refer to the Greenpeace Canned Tuna Guide and write or email the companies with tuna brands you are avoiding to tell them why you’re not buying their product anymore. You can email them from the company pages.

There has been some criticism that the Shop Ethical! app developer Outware Mobile also produces gambling related apps. It is true that Outware Mobile have produced an iPhone app for the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival, commissioned by News Limited.

Outware Mobile points out that ‘SuperRacing app is not a gambling app but rather a form guide to the spring racing carnival races. Apple does not allow gambling apps into the appstore’. There is sure to be a wide range of opinion as to whether the SuperRacing app is ‘ethical’ or not.

We are not big fans of the horsies, or the pokies, or News Limited for that matter. However we decided to proceed with the iPhone development, knowing about this previous work and viewing it in the light of the full range of Outware Mobile’s work, much of which has had a strong focus on providing useful empowering information. Examples include the RiderLog app for Bicycle Victoria and the Snap Send Solve app that lets you proactively report issues to your local council.

For some years we had been asked by people if an app for mobile devices was in the pipeline. In mid-2009 Outware Mobile approached us having used the print and web guide and, after some discussion, offered to build the app as a collaborative project (our data, their app development) with no up front charges. We saw this as a way to make the guide available to people in new way, and also give this relatively new business an opportunity to showcase their skills in a positive way. No other organisation offered to make the app.

There has been some criticism that, unlike most apps, we have a charge for the annual update of information in our Shop Ethical! smartphone app. We no longer use this business model. If you have the latest version (released Feb 2012), you will not need to buy the app again. We will however be moving to a subscription-based model later in 2013, where you will need to pay an annual fee to keep receiving free updates.

Our main database is updated daily, while free updates are made available to users of our app every three months or so. The latest information is always available for free on our website, www.ethical.org.au.

While we would love to make the Shop Ethical! app free, we need to charge for it as it is one of our main sources of income, along with print guide sales and workshops. This income allows us to continue to do what we do, and be independent from commercial interests.

Of course, the guide is exploring the real cost of our everyday purchases. The smartphone app is about $5, the print guide $9, which we consider a reasonable amount to be paying once a year for the information we collate together. It’s a little more than the cost of a cup of coffee.