Negotiating the Ethical Consumerism Minefield

I was recently given a copy of The Good Shopping Guide. It's all thought provoking stuff, but can leave you feeling a bit overloaded with too much information. I would count myself as somebody who tries to be fairly conscientious in what I buy, but that can be difficult sometimes. For example, I try to buy either fairtrade or organic produce where I can. So recently I've been buying Seeds of Change organic pasta and sauces - a good thing, yes? Except that I hadn't realised that Seeds of Change was actually owned by Mars - a company that seems to rate lower in ethical terms than Nestle*.

As I said, its all rather complicated and we're dealing with shades of grey here, which means the challenge is to work out where my priorities lie when so many different factors collide. Yes, I care about animal rights, but I'm actually more bothered about human rights and trade justice. Even within areas of concerns, we make our own priorities. I care about the environment - and in many respects I try to minimise my carbon-footprint - I don't have a car and use public transport, my energy comes from renewable sources, but when it comes to giving up air travel, hmmm, that's maybe a sacrifice too far - I do enjoy my travelling and foreign city breaks. That said I would not object to paying more for the privilege in an environmental tax if the money was then put back into green measures.

The danger is that the more we learn, the more it seems like we cannot win. For example, in terms of the big three high street coffee houses - all now offer fairtrade options, whilst Starbucks rates badly for using GM produce, its overall environmental performance is better than Cafe Nero or Costa, so how do we choose? There is a temptation to feel why should we bother - there will be something wrong whatever we decide. But, to look at things a different way, the more information we have the more we are able to decide which things really matter to us and make decisions based on that in the belief that actually, as consumers we do have some power and the small choices we make can slowly bring about changes.

I'm sure there's more that we all can do. Personally, I feel the need to sort out my banking - currently being with Abbey, having switched to them before their takeover by the Santander

Group, when their ethical record was better than many alternatives. I've stayed with them basically out of laziness and if I'm being honest my desire to switch soon is more motivated by the completely shoddy levels of service than ethical considerations, but it does present an opportunity to make a better choice when I get myself into gear enough to do something about it.

A final thought for all you motorists - can you guess which company has the lowest ethical rating I've seen yet?*

Esso came in with a rating of just 4% in ethical terms. Now that is truly abysmal.

* Based on the Ethical Company Index from the Ethical Company Organisation.