March - April update

This is a regular update where I summarise my progress with my 2013 ethical resolutions.

I'm doing pretty well with some of my resolutions. I've kept up regular charitable donations and made additional one-off donations, I'm doing my best with Michael Pollan's food rules and my meat free days, and I only buy free-range or organic meat. I don't always stick to this when I'm dining out and someone else orders - this is somewhere I can improve. I continue to use my Shop Ethical! app whenever I am buying an unfamiliar grocery item or brand.

However, I definitely need to eat at home more often (and I'm hoping for some inspiration from the new Michael Pollan book, Cooked). I am yet to host a clothes swap party or have another self-inflicted "Buy Nothing New Month". I still need to buy a bicycle (which my parents are giving me as a birthday gift). I haven't tried growing anything on the balcony and I obviously haven't been blogging here once a fortnight. I have had a guest staying with me the last couple of months so my electricity use has actually doubled and presumably my water consumption has also increased. My exercise levels have stayed pretty stable and I continue to suck at getting enough sleep.

I still have piles of things to give away but I haven't managed to move them out of my apartment. A friend has asked me to join her in a garage sale so I might try to sell some of the more valuable items and donate the proceeds to charity.

I feel as though I have been buying less but it still looks like a lot when I list everything I bought in the last two months. My (non-food, non-medication/-hygiene) purchases for March and April include:

• scarf by Otto and Spike (on sale, from one of my favourite local stores, William Topp).  Otto and Spike use surplus yarn and wool from industry to make gorgeous knitted accessories in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. They have a wonderful story that you can read here.
• cut flowers from the farmers market. I love having cut flowers in the house but in the hot Perth weather they don't last very long. Native flowers are the best, especially when from my mum's garden.
• a new ball point pen. My other pens had all disappeared and I need a pen for work. Mainly to write prescriptions, it would seem. It's probably made in China but I didn't have time to shop around for an ethically sound pen. My consolation with this one is that it takes refills and that it's from an Australian company.
• cleanser and eye serum from Aesop. I've written before about my love of Aesop. The cleanser I use every day and will probably last me a year. The eye serum was a more questionable purchase - I didn't check the price before I bought it and I have only used it a few times (due to my sucky sleeping habits). I will try to use it more often and justify the expense. I will write about the beauty industry and anti-ageing products in future.
• Aussie-owned, Aussie-made organic laundry detergent and some NZ-owned, NZ-made stain remover. The former unfortunately has an overpowering lavender scent. Again, I must take the time to learn how to make my own cleaning products.
• Aussie-owned, Aussie-made products to combat silverfish that I have been finding around my bathroom (not the wardrobe, strangely). Obviously, I don't want silverfish to shorten the lifespan of my clothing. The Hovex products are not nearly as nice as my clothing protectors from Thurlby Herb Farm, which is a Western Australian company that supports its local community in South West WA.

I also bought a few gifts in April but as I have been too slack to wrap and send them, I had better not list them here in case the recipients read this blog post. 

February update

In February, I was busy living (ethically, I hope) rather than blogging. My resolution to blog here at least fortnightly was over-ambitious. However, I will continue to summarise my progress with the other ethical resolutions.

I increased my regular charitable donations to keep donations at least 5% of my income.

I am doing fairly well with my food-based resolutions (eating less meat, eating only free-range meat, buying from independent grocers and farmers' markets, following Pollan's Food Rules, using the ShopEthical! app) except that I started a job that involves a lot of driving and subsequently started buying a diet cola, sparkling water and takeaway coffees. To combat this, I purchased some coffee to make in a plunger at home (Organic Frida by Republica) and a water bottle that will keep my water icy cold, even after being left in the car on a 40C day.

Speaking of purchases, I made a few this month (as well as food, drink and medication). These were:

1. A vintage beaded blouse; 
2. Three make-up items from Aussie brand Australis (I will post about make-up in future), for a burlesque-themed party I was attending;
3. My new S'Well water bottle (from one of my favourite local independent stores);
4. Dishwashing liquid (must learn how to make my own);
5. A vehicle logbook (Australian-made by an Australian-owned company) for my new job, for which I am driving up to 200km per day; and
6. A baby-blue, second-hand pushbike car.

That's right - I was supposed to write about choosing a bicycle and instead I spent my vehicle-buying energies choosing a car.  Ugh. That's another post altogether.

Did you make any ethical resolutions for 2013? How are they going?

Buying Christmas gifts? My gift guide.

I have decided to throw in my 2 cents (more like $200, at current Perth prices) with a Christmas gift guide. There's a wealth of links here about how to simplify your Christmas, including Zen Habits' Case Against Buying Christmas Presents. A sobering statistic from The Life You Can Save newsletter:

"According to the National Retail Foundation, last year, $563 billion dollars were spent just in the U.S. during the holidays in 2011. To put that in perspective, according to a UN report, the cost of reducing by half the proportion of the world’s population in extreme poverty will be $189 billion dollars in 2015."

However, if you are going to buy gifts (as I am), my first suggestion would be to make a charitable donation on behalf of the recipient - for example, Oxfam Unwrapped's Pile of Poo (or any of their other excellent gifts for the less faecally-inclined). As well as helping Oxfam's humanitarian projects, you can claim the donation as a tax deduction! Win-win.

If your recipient just wouldn't be satisfied with a donation, think about gifting an experience. Depending on your budget, options include a holiday, birdwatching, a voucher for a local independent restaurant, some babysitting or a cooking class. A voucher for shoe repair or a tailor would allow them to rejuvenate old shoes and clothes, to stop them going to landfill.

If you must give a more tangible gift, keep in mind the resources (environmental and human) that went into producing the gift. Fair trade items tick the box here (try the Oxfam shop or if in Perth, Fair Go Trading in Northbridge). If you're buying for a sweet tooth, there's a lot of delicious fair trade chocolate about (Fair Go have a Butter and Sea Salt chocolate that I really want to try - hint to any family or friends reading).

You can also head to local markets for locally produced items. Some of my upcoming favourite Perth holiday markets include Unwrapped Designer Market (Sundays December 9th and 16th in Forrest Place), Subi Farmers Market Annual Christmas Gift Market (Saturday December 8th, 8am to noon) and Illuminites Christmas Festival (Friday December 14th, 5pm to 10pm, Perth Cultural Centre).

Support your independent bookstores by giving books as gifts. Be subversive with beautiful coffee-table books with an underlying message of sustainability. I recommend Kevin McCloud's 43 Principles of Home, Amanda Talbot's Rethink: The Way You Live, Michael Pollan's Food Rules (beautifully illustrated by Maira Kalman) or India Flint's Second Skin.

Some other thoughtful gift guides I recommend are Nicholas D. Kristof's Gifts That Change Lives for the New York Times (charitable donations), GiveWell's Top Charities for the 2012 Giving Season (also donations), Oxfam's Top Ten Gifts (all fair trade) and Sarah Wilson's Christmas Gift Guide.

If none of the above will satisfy, I recommend something from Aesop. Unlike mainstream beauty companies, this fiercely independent Australian brand puts most of its money back into research and development, rather than advertising and promotions. They don't have sales, which is a good indicator that their products don't have ridiculous mark-ups. The products are all made in Australia and they do what they promise on the label, in addition to looking great in the bathroom and smelling divine. They're expensive but they last for months (and then some). As a universally pleasing gift, I would recommend the Resurrection Aromatique Handwash. Every time your gift recipient uses it, or spies it next to their sink, they will sigh with pleasure and think of you with fondness for bringing it into their life.

What are your recommendations for ethical gift-giving?

Occupy Christmas

A wise colleague told me earlier this year that we must "decry the rampant materialism" that has led to individualism.

The local TV news last night reported that there are 39 days until Christmas, then warned those us who have not commenced Christmas shopping that we had better start now. They also reported that residents of my state (Western Australia) are expected to spend $5 billion this Christmas (based on this report by the Australian Retailers Association). While I don't begrudge local retailers and producers a living, I do wonder how many Christmas gifts, decorations, cards and other purchases will end up in the bin long before next Christmas rolls around.

In 2012, Saturday November 24th is Buy Nothing Day. I first heard about BND via Adbusters magazine, which I used to read in Borders on Oxford Street. (Appropriately, I never purchased it.) BND is a protest against consumerism. It will be nearly impossible for most people reading this blog to buy nothing for one day because most of us are continuously paying things like rent, mortgage, insurance, utilities, education fees, phone bills and so on. However, it is possible to plan your day so you are not buying any food, drinks, fuel or "stuff" on BND.

A variation on BND is Occupy Christmas. This movement encourages us to purchase locally produced goods from independent retailers. Visit design markets, small independent stores and farmers markets and you won't be disappointed.

Will you give Buy Nothing Day or Occupy Christmas a go? I've found that participating in Buy Nothing New Month is still having a positive influence on my purchasing patterns.

I leave you with the words of the "world's poorest president", Jose Mujica of Uruguay, who decries the model of consumption in rich countries. He is interviewed in yesterday's BBC News Magazine:

"I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more. This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself. I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice."

What I buy at the supermarket & how I "Shop Ethical!"

I'm a strong proponent of voting with my wallet. This is a general post about how I do that at the supermarket. There are many product categories available at supermarkets, each deserving of its own post (or series of posts) that I'll cover in future. These include food, toiletries and cosmetics, cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, clothing and textiles, and more.

I feel the two big supermarket chains in Australia have a real duopoly. (Gosh! I just googled it and Maggie Beer agrees in this article published online 30 minutes ago.) The "big two" lure us in with loyalty programs, loss leaders and discount fuel offers. They're big pushers of tobacco, alcohol and gambling. I try to shop at independent supermarkets, farmers markets, greengrocers, butchers and other independent retailers. When I do shop at the "fresh food people" or "down, down, prices are down" I'm careful to choose brands and products that I want to encourage them to stock more - local, Australian owned, organic and fair trade products. These products are usually found on the bottom or top shelf or inexplicably (in the case of organic hot chocolate and instant coffee), the "health food" aisle.

Making choices at the supermarket can be overwhelming. Packaged products are covered with all sorts of misleading labels trying to convince us of their health or environmental benefits. Marshmallows are "99% fat free"! Likewise, many "natural" products are neither healthy for us nor the environment. Many iconic Australian brands, like Vegemite and Tim Tams, are no longer Australian-owned. You may be boycotting Nestlé but not realise that they own Connoisseur ice cream (I can attest to this; the logo is very subtle).

One tool to assist supermarket decision-making is the Shop Ethical! app or its hardware form, the Guide to Ethical Supermarket Shopping book. I used the book before I had a smartphone but I find the app more convenient. I also get less weird stares from fellow shoppers. The app allows you to search for products via brand name or category. For each product, it offers information such as ownership, number of Australian employees, any boycotts, scores on various ethical shopping profiles, environmental pros and cons, treatment of employees and other ethical considerations. For each product, there is also an overall recommendation and you can quickly scroll through these for each product category. You can "favourite" products for quick reference.

I do not blindly follow the recommendations in the guide (eg sometimes I buy Green & Black organic cocoa, even though it is owned by Cadbury) but in most cases I agree with the recommendations and it makes my supermarket shopping much easier. If you don't follow the overall recommendations of the guide, there is enough information (and hyperlinks) to assist you in making your own decision about individual products.

Further reading:

Ethical Consumer Guide - the not for profit organisation responsible for the Shop Ethical! app
Dick Smith's Magazine of Forbidden Ideas "Censored by the Murdoch Press!"
Ausbuy, Australian Owned and Australian Made
Fair Trade Association, Australia and New Zealand
Australian Made, Australian Grown
Choice magazine's survey on country of origin labelling


This blog post is purely based on my opinion. I do not have any financial stakes in any of the companies or brands recommended and I am not affiliated with them, other than being a consumer.