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Ethical Consumerism, An Introduction

by Sasha on April 22, 2008

in Consumer

As I shared with you a few weeks ago, I choose to pay more for my electricity. And in 2007, 71 percent of my total grocery budget went to support local agriculture and small businesses.

Each year, I buy a harvest share at a local community supported agriculture farm. I promise to start waxing poetic about my fabulous fruits and veggies once they start pouring in around mid-May. But for now, my topic of discussion is the act of deliberately choosing certain sources and providers for my purchases.

Sometimes I spend more, sometimes less, but I always try to spend consciously. And this concept is at the very root of ethical consumerism.

Wikipedia defines ethical consumerism as:

…buying things that are made ethically. Generally, this means without harm to or exploitation of humans, animals or the natural environment.

I find this to be a somewhat narrow definition, really, as ethics are a highly personal matter. While I may believe in supporting local agriculture and channeling my grocery budget away from factory and agribusiness farms, someone else may want the Coca-Cola company to take over the market and choose to channel all his spending towards their products.

I prefer to look at it instead as conscious spending. Whatever my interests, when I look over my budget and spending, I want it to reflect my personal moral criteria. There are two main ways to accomplish this goal: paying for products and services you believe in, and avoiding those you don’t.

Positive Buying – This is the term used for what I call “voting with your dollars,” channeling your spending towards recycled or fair trade goods, local organic farms, woman- or minority-owned businesses, cruelty-free products, etcetera. Essentially, you are investing your monies in a business you believe in, helping to ensure its success.

The United Kingdom has a relatively active ethical consumist movement, and even a magazine dedicated to the topic, Ethical Consumer. The publication rates companies according to an “ethiscore” which is meant to assess the environmental, human/animal rights, and political impact of each company, the idea being that consumers can then choose to support companies with the lowest negative impact.

Moral Boycott – The other side of this is the avoidance of companies whose practices you do not support. Ethical Consumer has a large list of these as well, including:

  • Adidas, for its use of kangaroo skin in footwear
  • ChevronTexaco, for dumping toxic waste in the Amazon
  • Starbucks, for failing to support fair trade practices

If you watched Blood Diamond and then decided never to purchase diamond jewelry, you are practicing moral boycott.

Why Bother? – Well, sometimes it works. The primary law of consumerism, if you buy it, they will sell it, comes into play when these purchasing behaviors are witnessed on a larger scale. Wal-Mart starts selling organic products. Sweatshops close, while fair trade coffee shops open. There’s been talk that specific purchasing behaviors only serve to create niche markets, but these markets are growing.

Just this month, BusinessWire reported that:

The organic food segment dominates overall organics spending with sales in excess of US$20 billion in Europe and US$17 billion in the US alone. Food products are also increasingly being tagged as organic. In 2007 15.1% of new food product launches tracked by Productscan were tagged as organic, compared to 7.3% in 2002.

As the ethical movement has grown, a number of companies have tried to position themselves as green, some with more success than others. Going forward it is imperative that businesses create a clear plan of how to re-adjust to meet consumer demand or risk being left behind.

While some companies merely posture (a tactic termed “greenwashing“), many companies are reacting to public demand and pursuing more socially responsible and environmentally sound business practices.

Conscious buying alone may always not achieve what you’re looking for. If environmental impact is what concerns you, tossing a household full of products into a landfill won’t offset all your new, green purchases. Buying consciously while buying only what you need is the key.

Does your spending reflect your beliefs?

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My Electric Bill: Why I Pay More

by Sasha on April 8, 2008

in Consumer

I asked a few weeks back whether any of you had changed your spending behaviors based on our current recession. Some of you had cut back, while others underscored the importance of always living frugally, so no recession-time cutbacks are necessary.

I, too, choose to live frugally. But sometimes, I also choose to pay more.

In fact, on Halloween Day 2006, I officially made the decision to pay more for my electricity. 1.3 cents per kilowatt hour more, in fact, which generally means an extra $11 to $16 per month for me, based on recent history.

Clean Power Choice
On that date, I signed up with New Wind Energy, which offers nationwide green energy programs. They participate in the NJ Clean Power Choice program, where these charges are directly added to my monthly utility bill.

It’s a set-it-and-forget-it approach to green power, allowing me to support my chosen provider without the installation or hassle of new lines, etc. New Wind Energy is just one of lots of providers available throughout the country, which allowed me to choose the type(s) of power I desired.

I filled out a basic form, and about a month later I was being charged the difference in power cost, paying the delivery fees to my local utility while my supply payment is redirected to support wind power. The electricity I buy is supplied to the grid, even though it isn’t technically going straight to my house. My favorite analogy here is of adding clean water to a a bathtub of dirty water. The water’s not going to become crystal clear right away, but it will gradually become cleaner.

windturbine.jpgMy money helps to build more wind turbines, the most cost-effective renewable energy technology in the world. You can read more about wind energy here, but one of the biggest benefits is the reduction of greenhouse gases, as wind power creates no emissions. The more of this type of power coming into the grid, the better, and I’m happy to help tip the balance.

Renewable Energy Certificates
The Clean Power Choice Program is somewhat more straightforward than RECs (renewable energy certificates), another option for greening your power. There’s a lot to discuss about RECs, but they work much like carbon offsets — you’re purchasing your equivalent electricity usage in green power. Even if your state offers no power choice programs, you can still go online and buy your allottment of RECs.

Wikipedia provides some great background on RECs:

Because nuclear and fossil fuel power are subsidized and their full costs are not built into the price charged, they are cheaper than most renewable sources. The wholesale price for electricity is determined by non-renewable sources and is often less than the cost of producing it through cleaner renewable methods. This is due partially to government subsidies for the nonrenewable energy industry, and partially to a market structure that does not fully capture all social and environmental costs associated with conventional electricity generation (like air pollution, costs to maintain the military in oil-rich parts of the world, disposal costs for nuclear waste, health impacts of dirty generation, etc.) A REC represents an additional payment for producing power from renewable resources, allowing the producer to generate and sell electricity at the local market price and thus enabling more clean renewable energy to be made.

Going Solar
I had been actively pursuing solar panel installation for my house, but the contractor explained I’d have to cut down a giant 50-year-old tree I adore, plus the cost, while well-subsidized, still was nearly $20,000. That’s a lot for a little ranch house like mine, plus I don’t plan to live here for more than another 5 years, so it may not pay to do it. A system only goes about 15 years before needing repairs, another consideration. I am hoping that further subsidies for solar installation will become available in the future and will see what I can do on that front as well.

My Choice
Faced with all of these options, I took the easy route to clean energy for my home with the Clean Power Choice program, and I’ve never regretted it, even as fuel and utility costs continue to rise.

But why? Simply said, I believe that my power as a consumer is one of the strongest powers I have, possibly more impactful than the US voting process, though of course I still plan to exercise my right to vote.

But with my dollars, I’m voting every day, sanctioning the business practices of the companies my money supports, regardless of my intentions. I’ve been this way for a long time, but only recently learned the name for my particular condition: ethical consumerism. (More on that in a future entry.)

For most of my young life, bargains were paramount, and I continually made choices based on the best price or best customer experience. Now I see my purchasing power as directly shaping the world in which I live, and I’m making very different choices.

I am well aware that the environmental impact of our present fuel consumption is a humongous spectre, of such massive scale that it seems impossible to combat it. I’ll confess that I do have a relatively apocalyptic vision of our planet’s future. However dismal the outlook may seem, I’m a person of action, and over the last few years, I’ve seen the scales start to tip in positive ways from an aggregate of what are really minor lifestyle changes. It’s encouraging.

I willingly pay more for electricity so that I can be using and contributing to the kind of power I believe in: clean, green power.

I pay more as an investment, so that over time these technologies will become better and more affordable. In fact, according to a recent article in BusinessWeek, it’s happening already.

So I pack a few lunches a month to cover the extra expense. To me, it’s worth it.

Green Power Provider Locator [EPA.gov]
Wind Energy Basics [National Renewable Energy Laboratory]
Clean Energy: It’s Getting Affordable [BusinessWeek]

Image Credit: Phault

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