19th May 2005
Dissatisfied with Democracy? Try Shopping.
Were you one of the 98% of electors not in a marginal constituency on May 5th? [1] Perhaps you feel your vote didn't count for much or perhaps you wanted to vote on issues ignored by the main parties? Or perhaps you just don't want to wait another 5 years before expressing your political preferences?
Instead, join the millions of consumers across the UK who are voting on a wide range of pressing global issues simply with their average weekly shopping trip, issues that include:
- illegal logging
- toxic chemical production
- child labour
- biodiversity
- the arms trade
- nuclear power
- animal abuse
- sweatshop working conditions
- climate change(2)
To assist with this increasingly mainstream democratic alternative, a new database was launched to the general public on May 19th.
www.ethiscore.org - a project of Ethical Consumer magazine - enables consumers to quickly identify the most ethical products, from toothpaste to television sets. A quick-to-use feature of the site enables users to be more directly challenging and conversely, supportive of companies - emails can be fired off to the best and worst performing companies, offering a brief explanation about why they're voting with their wallets.
According to Rob Harrison, editor of Ethical Consumer magazine, "although on the surface, ethical shopping can look a lot like self-indulgent liberalism, at another level it is being recognised as offering a coherent opposition to corporate power and the language of profit and commercialisation. Some are even suggesting that consumers are the new 'counterbalancing force to capitalists'[3] in the face of declining power and influence of trade unions."
Many ethical consumer actions - especially buying from `trading campaigners' like CafeDirect - implicitly posit alternative models for development and activity. These proliferating alternative models make it harder than ever to argue that `business and politics as usual' are the only options we have.
For further information about the work of ECRA, please refer to any of the following: