Blog – Page 4 – I Should Probably Change

A changing wardrobe

In my final week of this month’s ‘change’ I wanted to explore how I could be more ethical with the things I own and discover whether I should be making more ethical choices with what I have.

This graphic from

Ethical Consumer pretty much sums up the problem with what we already have stuffed in our wardrobe. It’s pretty crazy that around 1.7 billion garments (30% of what we own) lie unworn at home and that new unworn clothes worth £30 billion hang in our wardrobe but we spend £44 billion every year on buying more. I was once told by a stylist that the average women wears 20% of her wardrobe 80% of the time. I wonder if you identify with that?

Reading these stats has definitely made me think about how and why I buy clothes. Check out the brilliant info-graphic below which illustrates a really great way to look at purchasing decisions, I’m sure I’ll be sticking this to my wardrobe!

Charity shops and swapping

In light of this, this week I set myself the challenge to give away surplus clothes and to see what I could find in my local charity shop. I set out on a shopping trip with my daughter, we are blessed to live near a lot of great quality charity shops. Within an hour we both had new dresses and I had a new top, it took a bit more rummaging but we are both pretty pleased with our new outfits, I have a little girl who’s very excited to wear her ‘big girl party dress’!

Secondly the clear out!

I generally try to clear out my wardrobe out every six months and I tend to have the rule that if I haven’t worn it in the last year it goes. Getting my colours done at True Colours has really helped me have much less in my wardrobe that I don’t wear because I know exactly which colours I should go for (check out the handy swatch they gave me). However there are still a few bits and pieces that if I’m honest I don’t wear/don’t suit me. Luckily my friend was hosting a clothes swap and so I was able to take my bag of clothes and have the satisfaction of seeing people take them away knowing they looked much better on them. I finally said goodbye to my favourite pair of shoes that I totally can’t walk in, someone else is now enjoying their gloriousness and you know what? It feels good!

In conclusion
This month has taught me to take more of an interest in where my clothes come from, to genuinely think about each piece’s history. I’ve been surprised at charity shop finds and experienced the cathartic joy of ridding myself of clothing waste. I’ve been challenged to look at how what I wear effects others and yes, I’ve given away my beautiful shoes – one step closer to ethical living!

My favourites

After discovering more about what makes clothes ethical I was interested in how my two favourite high street stores (Fatface and White Stuff) fair in the ethical stakes. I sent both of them emails asking:

1. Would you consider yourself an ‘ethical’ company?
2. Where are the majority of your clothes made?
3. Do you use organic cotton?

Both companies replied pretty quickly.

Fatface, which scores 85/100 on the Good Shopping Guide, answered that they follow the Ethical Trading Initiative’s base code, are members of Accord and are continuously driving change in their supply chain in a ‘practical and specific way on the ground with their supply partners’ (I’m not entirely sure what this means!). They said that 42% of their clothes are made in India and they don’t use organic cotton at the moment.

White Stuff, scores 67/100 on the Good Shopping Guide, replied that they are active members of the Ethical Trading Initiative and as members commit to conducting their business in the following way:

. Demonstrating a clear commitment to ethical trade
· Integrating ethical trade into our core business practices
· Driving year-on-year improvements to working conditions
· Supporting suppliers to improve working conditions

They source the majority of their clothes from China, India, Portugal and Turkey, and regularly visit each factory to check working conditions. They are looking at their cotton sourcing to identify how to be more sustainable in this area, and they said they are passionate that the choices they make are the right ones. They pointed me here for more.

I definitely felt like White Stuff gave me a bit more than the corporate answers and from reading more they do seem to be a company with a conscience. I particularly love that they give their employees two paid days of to volunteer in their communities – more companies should do this!

I’ve learnt that it is pretty difficult to shop ethical on the high-street. No company seems to tick all the boxes but there does seem to be lots of movement towards better working practices. Of course if you want to be completely safe, online options like People Tree and Liv are great sustainable and fair trade companies who come top of all the ethical charts, however I might have to wait for a sale to shop at either of them!

I suppose the main thing I’ve learnt is to choose companies that are moving in the right direction. I will choose sustainable and organic fabrics where possible and take an interest in who is actually making my clothes.

Next week I’ll be tackling my own wardrobe and seeing how I can be more ethical with what I already own.

Ethical on the high street

What makes my clothes ethical?
So this month I’m trying to make a change when it comes to buying clothes. There are lots of issues to consider including animal rights (silk, leather, wool, fur) and product sustainability. The two main issues I’m going to focus on are ‘cotton’ and ‘supply chain management’ since they feel like they resonate most with me.

Cotton
The majority of my clothes are cotton so I figured it’s probably good to know a bit about it. Cotton is a huge world crop (around 2.5% of the world’s cultivated land) much of this uses pesticides in it’s growth. I’m no gardener but I know pesticides kill ‘pests’ so they’re pretty nasty! They can pollute the air and water, damaging habitats and finally ending up on our clothes as an irritant. The ethical world’s answer to this is organic cotton, this is grown without been genetically modified or using pesticides. Organic cotton seems to be becoming more common with shops like Zara, H&M and M&S producing their own organic lines.

Supply chain management
The collapse of a Bangladesh factory in 2013 put the spotlight back on big companies who source low-paid workers often working in poor conditions. There were lots of calls to boycott clothes made in Bangladesh and other countries where poor practices were happening. I’m not sure how I feel about this and would love to hear your comments. Clearly the clothing industry is one that provides work for many in some of the world’s poorest countries. Boycotting companies who source workers here seems to me to have the potential of causing further oppression. I believe it’s more important to find companies who prioritise fair pay and humane working conditions and choose to spend my money there. For example H&M are working towards improved pay structures for fair living wages by 2018. This will affect around 850,000 textile workers, you can read about it here.

Shopping on the high street
So I know to look for organic cotton and for companies who are cleaning up their supply chain but who are they on the high street? H&M profile their ‘Conscious’ range which is organic though I found it pretty difficult to find in the store, it could definitely be labelled more clearly. They launch their new range this week and are aiming for all their cotton to be organic, recycled or ‘better’ by 2020 so they seem to be moving in the right direction. Similarly M&S is worth noting as a company that is working hard to be more sustainable. They are aiming for 50% of their cotton to be sustainable by 2020 so not quite as impressive. Both of the above are working extensively to clean up their supply chain.

This was all well and good knowing but what I really want to know is how do the places where I currently spend my money fair in the ethical stakes? I’ll be getting in touch with them this week and will let you know how I get on!

Ethical on the high street

Changing my clothes

In my last blog about energy companies I came to the realisation that it’s actually pretty freeing not to always chase the ‘cheapest’ deal, to make purchasing decisions based on values rather than value (if you get my drift!). So this month I thought I should tackle another area where I’m always looking for the best deal – clothing. To prevent me from being too overwhelmed I’m going to tackle women’s fashion, so I won’t include sportswear, footwear, underwear etc, I’ll save those for another day!

The average UK household spends somewhere in the region of £1,200 annually on clothing so I’m definitely interested to see where all that money is going.

For the sake of brevity I will be looking at two particular areas to see what ‘change’ I could make.

Sourcing ethical clothing
Firstly next week I want to look into the issues surrounding ethical purchasing of clothes. I’ll be asking the questions; ‘What makes my clothes ethical?’ and ‘Where can I buy them?’. I want to focus primarily on the high-street rather than specialist ethical online companies, to test whether it’s possible to shop with a conscience in big name stores.

Redressing the balance
Secondly I want to look at what I already own and whether I could be making more ethical choices with what I have. Scarily I discovered (via Ethical Consumer) that around 1.7 billion garments (30% of what we own) lie unworn at home and that new unworn clothes worth £30 billion hang in our wardrobe but we spend £44 billion every year on buying more. I want to look at how I can redress (pun intended!) that balance in my own wardrobe.

If you’ve got any tips on ethical spending on the high street or recommendations of your go-to companies do let me know!

Switching energy for good

It’s taken a few weeks of going back and forth but tonight we finally decided to switch our energy supplier from EDF to Good Energy. You can read all about them in my previous blog post but the main thing to know is that they use 100% green energy source and invest heavily in renewable energy in the UK. Being completely green definitely makes them stand out in the British market. This Uswitch diagram illustrates the point pretty well (though it’s a couple of years out of date so most of the companies have slightly improved their renewable sourcing since then).

Deciding whether to go with Green Energy or Ebico (who help low-income households) was a really difficult choice. Both the issues of fair pricing and renewable sourcing are hugely important. If Ebico had been more green we would have definitely gone with them (they source energy via SSE and buy about 24% green). It was pretty frustrating that we couldn’t find an ethical company that combined the best of both Good Energy and Ebico.

A legacy
In the end myself and my husband came down on the side of green because we both feel that it’s an issue that we don’t want to be naive or ignorant about. Since the birth of our daughter we’ve had a growing awareness that our decisions now will effect the kind of world she brings her own children up in. I set out saying I wanted to stop making choices that oppressed others. I think knowingly choosing non-renewable sources clearly has a cost for future generations, not mentioning the very real cost of climate change to people across the world today.

Decisions, decisions
What this month has taught me is that often being ethical means making choices. Even in these first few months I’ve had to review what it means for me to be ethical. In January I discovered that I care more about fairly traded ingredients than animal testing, this is my choice, it’s no more right or wrong, it’s just mine. Often nothing ticks all the boxes in terms of being ethical, we each have to decide which boxes we care the most about.

No more switching
Over the years I’ve switched energy several times and I have an inbox full of ‘switch related’ emails. Making a choice based on personal values rather than monetary value is liberating and the head space is certainly worth a few extra pounds a month. Not constantly needing to check that I’m on on the cheapest deal is quite a relief! We’ll assess our tariff after a year to make sure we are not paying more than we can afford but I’m hopeful that this is one switch we’ll stick to!

People and energy

Last week I finished my blog by pondering the human cost of our energy consumption. There’s the questions of fair pay and fair pricing but then I came across Ebico. Thanks here have to go to Rachel Ingle for directing me towards them. I haven’t come across any other company like them so though this blog might sound one sided it’s because it is!

Ebico are the UK’s only not-for-profit energy company. They are seeking to reduce people living in fuel poverty, that is those who can’t afford the cost of fuel or are forced into poverty due to high bills. They are attempted to face the issue that with most energy companies the poorest people nearly always end up paying more because they often use pre-payment meters. More well off people get discounted prices because they pay by direct debit (making them a much safer bet for the energy companies).

The money bit

Ebico have one flat-rate which you pay no matter whether you are on a meter or pay by direct debit. They promise to keep their prices competitive and currently advertise their average prices as £848.19 a year for a low energy user and £1,307.02 for medium use. By my (somewhat haphazard) calculations that makes them a bit more expensive then other suppliers, but I suppose they are aiming at people form who the issue of fuel poverty is important and who want to use their money to make a difference. They have no standing charge so you only pay for what you use, therefore turning lights off will actually make a difference to your bills.

Energy with a conscience

As well as giving fairer prices to people of meters they have also set up a trust to support initiatives to improve the energy efficiency of the homes of low income householders and offer support and advice on saving energy. A list of the current projects they are funding can be found here.

I found an interesting interview with their founder, minister Hugh Lee where he explains the heart behind the company. It’s worth a read, especially if you need encouraging that not all energy companies are out to make as much money as possible!

The down-side

Now to the negatives, while Ebico’s principles are great and I think is amazing they even exist after doing so much research into green energy I had to take a look into that! Unfortuntely they are still relatively low on the renewable side of things, using only 24% compared to 44% coal, they do however use significantly less nuclear (only 2%), here’s the Good Energy’s fuel mix for comparison.

So I go into this week with a conundrum. Basically my choice is go green or fight fuel poverty, it seems I can’t do both…

To green or not to green?

I’ve spent some serious time trying to research the issues surrounding energy. An initial glance tells me that going ‘green’ is the most promoted of the ethical issues surrounding energy. With this in mind I’m going to focus this blog on what it means to be green. Next week I’m going to take a look at some questions that might have got lost in the shadow of ‘green’.

What is Green Energy?

I’m going to start right from the beginning since maybe some of you out there are as clueless as me! Green energy is any power that comes from sustainable sources (wind power, solar etc). The effect of carbon emissions on the world’s atmosphere are well documented but fossil fuel usage is the main culprit, in fact carbon dioxide emissions from power stations account for one third of the total produced.

The challenge of course is that the wealthy fraction of the world (of which we in the UK are part) have access to cheap energy however this energy contributes to climate change which has devastating results not for those of us who use it but for the poorest in the world. The evidence of floods, drought and other climate related problems through much of the world is rarely far from our TV screens.

What makes a company ‘green’?

So I think most of us know moving towards more greener sustainable forms of fuel is really important, in fact the lives of our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world quite literally depend on it. But how does it actually work? Well when I buy green fuel clearly it’s the same old gas and electric coming from the pipes and wires. The difference is that I’m now paying a different supplier. This supplier buys energy for the supply chain, if a company is green then they promise to buy a certain amount of energy from Green sources. Most companies offer this option however if differs how much they promise to buy, for example a ‘green tarrif’ could promise to buy £30 worth of green energy for every £100 you spend. Of course the best companies buy £100 for every £100 which leads me to look at some green options. This is explained much better here.

Looking into energy options feels totally overwhelming, there are just so many companies and tariffs offering green options. After reading lots and getting some recommendations I’ve narrowed it down to three options, as always I’m no expert, I’m just trying to wade my way through this stuff and make it slightly more coherent!

Ovo (Greener Energy)– This has been recommended by lots of people. Their website is great but in terms of being green only the Green Tariff is 100% renewable most of the other tariff’s are only 15%. This page shows where they get their energy from.

Ecotricity– Over the last six years, Ecotricity have invested more per customer per year in building new sources of renewable energy than all other UK suppliers put together. They will give £40 to Tearfund if you take up electricity or gas, or £60 to if you switch to their dual fuel option.

Good Energy – They come top on Ethical Consumer and The Good Shopping Guide. They are ethically accredited which means they have jumped through lots of tight hoops. The most important things is they are the only UK electricity supplier to use 100% renewable energy. They are trying to ‘make a difference to climate change’ and use many independent generators, lots more here.

What I found interesting is that all the ethical ratings for renewable energy companies focus on their green output and whether they fund nuclear power. While this is really important it’s interesting that the ratings for ethical issues surrounding people only take into account armaments or political donations (see below). This is something I will take a look at more in my next blog!

Clueless about energy

You join me at the beginning of my third challenge. This month I’m going to be looking into the ethics of energy both gas and electric.

We currently get everything from EDF who from a customer service and pricing point of view have actually being pretty good but a quick bit of research has shown me that they are the top offender in the ethical energy stakes!

There’s been a lot in the news about the ‘Big 6’ cutting their prices so I’ll be interested to see how companies outside those six are fairing. We are on a pretty tight budget so I’m keen to find out what makes energy ethical or not but I will be realistic that we can’t afford to up our energy bills much, I will try to be honest about this challenge!

It’s slightly embarrassing to admit that my knowledge of green energy comes from secondary school geography so that’s about 15 years out of date! Hopefully over the next month I can remedy this huge hole in my knowledge and suss out what buying from a green supplier actually means.

I need all the help I can get with this one so if you have any tips please do comment and set me in the right direction.

Haircare update

In December I looked into how to make more ethical choices with the shampoos and conditioners I bought. You can catch up on all the ethical questions I considered here.

I’ve now nearly two months into this particular ‘ethical change’ so I thought it would be good to do a little bonus update because I’ve always wanted this blog to be honest about the challenges of attempting to be ethical.

I started out using Body Shop (my reasons are here). While the products were great, and I’m sure would be perfect for a lot of people, I found that I was increasing frustrated with how my hair was feeling. My hair is thick and curly and it felt like the shampoo wasn’t really cutting it. My hair is the one thing I wear everyday so I was determined for it not to be a source of annoyance plus surely ‘settling’ for a product just because it was ethical was never what this blog was about?

I decided to take a trip to Lush to see what they had to offer. I came away totally converted! Lush should really be offering training on their secrets of customer service because they excel at it. The staff were SO friendly, really helpful (and not in a pushy way) and above all refreshingly honest about their personal opinion on products. I was directed to Daisy because she has similar challenges with thick curly hair. She gave me her tips on what worked for her and walked me through the ethics of Lush (I’d explained about this blog).

I walked away with;

– a bar of shampoo – using a solid bar has been really interesting but quite fun! Does include SLS which is another ethical minefield but Lush explains why they use it really well here.

– a ’Big Solid Conditioner’ – strange to use after getting so used to the silkiness of liquid conditioners.

– Jungle conditioner bar – smells AMAZING!

– R&B hair moisturiser – used after washing as an extra treatment.

I probably spent more than I normally would in one go however I’m hoping these will last me a while, the shampoo bar claims to do 80 washes which is the equivalent of 3 bottles of shampoo. The result – well my hair is feeling lighter and cleaner. The combo of Jungle and R&B means is feels a little more tamed without relying extra styling products. I know my hair will never be described as ‘under control’ but this is definitely helping!

All of this has taught me to persevere and look for the right product rather than sticking with something just because it’s ethical.