As Ethical Consumer magazine reaches its 100th issue, Rob Harrison takes stock and asks whether the pace of cultural change is really increasing

“The 21st century will be the century of ethics, or it will not be at all.”  André Malreaux


One of the reasons why we were attracted to the Ethical Consumer project in the 1980s was that it appeared to address a ‘structural flaw in capitalism’. Although aid was providing poverty relief in the South and government regulation was taming some polluters, there was an underlying concern that such approaches were treating symptoms rather than causes.

In a global market, companies were simply relocating to countries without costly pollution controls or continuing to prop up oppressive regimes which sold them mineral rights at knock down prices.  Then, as now, there was something about the way markets were working that seemed to be rewarding the least ethical producers and punishing the best. There was a pervading sense of system failure.

“As well as being a guide to company behaviour, the Ethical Consumer is also a magazine dedicated to the promotion of the ideas behind ‘ethical consumption’...Consumer awareness at this level is very young, and we carry no illusions that any of our industrial monoliths are in any kind of any imminent danger.  Changing the way people perceive the shiny goods on their supermarket shelves is primarily a cultural change, and though these perceptions are not particularly deep rooted, cultural change is slow.” Ethical Consumer magazine issue 1 editorial.  March 1989.

Addressing the culture of ‘price-only buying’, though an apparently Quixotic task, appeared to go to the heart of some of the systemic problems we were observing. If the majority of consumers were asking more questions than just ‘how much is it?’, then the tendency to reward the most efficient employer of child labour simply melted away.

However, Ethical Consumer magazine began life in the heyday of Thatcherism. The language of price was everywhere, and in the ascendancy. Previously state-owned companies were being privatised and markets were cheered on as they began to colonise new areas of life such as pensions, education and healthcare. And with the tendency for markets to focus on price, the language of ethics or social values was becoming progressively eroded from day-to-day discussions in these subject areas.

A broader movement

On the positive side though, EC was not alone in its identification of these systemic problems. It was part of a broader movement which was beginning to counter the tendency for ethics to be eroded in every sphere occupied by business and economics. 

Language can be a reflection of how a culture is changing, and the table below shows how a new language has developed to take ethics into the heart of economic life.  The ‘New Tools’ column below shows some of the hundreds of new projects and ideas which are taking the cultural battle forward.

Of course, as we noted in our opening editorial, cultural change is slow.  When people asked us about the speed of cultural change in 1989, we guessed that around 20 years might be right.  Now that we have reached our 100th issue, it is seventeen years into the project.  Although ethical consumerism appears to be growing every day, is it still hopelessly optimistic to expect that the majority of purchases will be ethical in just three years time?

Measuring growth

When we last took stock of the progress of the magazine in issue 50, we compiled a good deal of survey data to show, perhaps surprisingly, that the majority of consumers claimed to be acting ethically in markets at least some of the time. [1] Nowadays we have an annual measurement of the state of the UK’s ethical markets compiled by the Co-op Bank’s Ethical Purchasing Index.  And although it shows £25.8 billion of ethically directed money (up from £9.2 billion in 1999), the base-line is low and in most markets ethical products account for less than 5%
of sales. [2]

Nevertheless, surveys around the world are still showing very widespread interest in ethical consumer issues and projections of dominant ethical markets are beginning to come from the least expected places. In November 2005, for example, a spokesperson from Kraft General Foods (the world’s second largest food Multinational) predicted that within 10 years, 60-80% of the market for coffee  would be taken up by products with independent certification for fair trade issues. [3]

So are we reaching a ‘tipping point’ where take up of the ethical culture will suddenly increase exponentially, or do ethical products look destined to remain niche?  There are four key factors which point to cultural dominance for ethics and which are worth highlighting: big business, big government, big consumer and peak oil.

Big business

Since issue 50 there has been a sea-change in public understanding of the damaging behaviours of big business. This has partly emerged through high-profile anti-globalisation (now better known as global justice) protests. Other noteworthy cultural interventions include Joel Bakan’s excellent film and book ‘The Corporation’ which articulated afresh the pathologically destructive nature of profit maximising behaviour. [4]

At the same time, and arguably as a consequence, there has been a move by big business into ethical markets. Perhaps personified for readers of this magazine by the takeover of Green & Blacks by Cadbury’s, it is this change above all the others which makes dominant market shares for ethical products most likely. Big business has the resources and access to markets to deliver high quality, competitively priced, ethical products quickly around the world. 

Of course, the jury is still out as to whether this change is unequivocally a good thing, and much of our future planning here at ECRA is on how best to respond to these developments.

Finally, although a lot of CSR (corporate social responsibility) is still greenwash, there has been a rapid development of ideas and tools which address the idea of CSR at quite a profound level. With some companies now ten years into CSR programs, environmental campaigners with impeccable pedigrees – like Jonathan Porritt – are now arguing that there is a significant difference between the best and worst multinationals in relation to ethical issuess. [5]  The old certainty – that all big business is equally bad – is becoming less and less tenable, making ethical purchasing an even more effective tool for change.

Big government

To date, the UK government has been at least ten years behind its own citizens when it comes to incorporating ethics into its own purchasing decisions.  In 2001 we published our ‘Manifesto for Change’ which outlined in detail some of the changes we believed the UK government should make to help us move towards a more ethically-orientated society. [13]   

In the manifesto, and at countless subsequent consultations, we have argued that greening the government’s own supply chains should be an essential pre-cursor to exhorting consumers to act sustainably.  How can consumers be expected to take sustainable consumption seriously when it is so obvious that government itself does not?

At last there appears to be some changes afoot in government ethical purchasing both here and abroad.  The UK government’s Sustainable Procurement Taskforce is due to publish a key report in April this year.  Whether or not New Labour has the guts to make its recommendations compulsory rather than voluntary (and early indications are not good), [6] important changes here and at European level are emerging which strip away the absurd legal obstacles to ethical procurement which have hindered development for so long.

The cultural change we are talking about has clearly led to a position where no-one is now prepared to stand up and argue, as they did in the Thatcher era, that ethical procurement is a pernicious obstacle to free trade.

Whatever happens, ethical procurement will increase substantially in the UK over the next three years which in turn will act to move big business even faster in the right direction.

Big consumer

The other significant change to have taken place since our last review has been moves by Europe’s big consumer organisations to introduce ethical consumer-style corporate ratings into some of their buyers’ guides.
“The first to break ranks was the Austrian VKI with its publication in October 2000 of an ethical rating of sports shoe companies in its magazine Konsument. The rating made front page news in the Austrian press and brought a flurry of responses from companies and consumers alike”. [7]

With often more than half a million members each, such consumer organisations can exert much more market pressure than humbler publications such as Ethical Consumer.   In addition, Europe’s consumer groups often co-ordinate research and publishing through a joint body (the ICRT).  In February 2002,  the consumer organisations of Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland simultaneously published a report into the ethical behaviour of Jeans manufacturers – thus concentrating pressure for change. [7]

The Dutch consumer organisation Consumentenbond became an early leader in the field, with an undertaking to move towards integrating CSR relationships into all its reports.  Since then much impetus has come from a group of four associations which includes Belgium, Portugal, Italy and Spain.  This group has co-ordinated publishing in a range of studies including two into petrol and chocolate in 2005.8]   Also in 2005, Germany’s Stiftung Warentest burst onto the scene with ethical reports into detergents, salmon and walking jackets.

Perhaps surprisingly one of the slowest off the mark has been the UK’s own Which? magazine. Although making occasional forays into ethical issues, it has appeared the most risk averse of the European groups.

In time though, with these new cultural developments occurring everywhere, it will be increasingly difficult for mainstream consumer organisations to defend intellectually the continued publication of price and quality only reports.  To do so fails to take responsibility for the environmental and social ‘externalities’ which such buying advice necessarily drives forward.  So with a likely future where all these associations include ethical consumer ratings in their reports, the pressure for change will increase very significantly indeed.

Peak Oil

The last factor to discuss is the emergence of new arguments which suggest that very profound effects of the unsustainability of western consumer lifestyles lie, not far off in the future, but just around the corner. Jeremy Leggett for example, in his book Half Gone, suggests that increased demand and dwindling supply of oil will see energy costs rising enormously over the next five to ten years. [9] 

Not only would a petrol price of between £10 and £40 a gallon [14] force consumers into sustainable consumption decisions at a rate which moral exhortation could never do, but Leggett predicts that whole economies will be devastated with profound social effects in as little as four years time.

If such events really are to occur, and we are already seeing some evidence of significant fuel cost growth, it will increase the political stock of those in the environmental movement who have been predicting such outcomes for some time.  This is, after all, what happened in the late 1980s following news of Chernobyl and Ozone depletion.

Of course, with predicted social disruption and an atmosphere of scarcity, it appears that the new culture and language of ethics may be just in time.  Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that with the right cultural tools, a future of greater material scarcity could bring forth happier, more relaxed, more inclusive and community-focused societies. [10]

Whether or not the changes discussed here take place, our core purpose here at Ethical Consumer looks like it will remain as relevant as ever.  Since issue 1 we have argued that for individual citizens to be effective political actors, they need good quality intelligence about which corporations are really their friends and which are their enemies. 

Whether the next ten years brings forth a nuclear era, more biotechnology and nanotechnology, or simply continued gross injustice, we cannot lobby effectively for change if we are simultaneously funding our most pernicious opponents on our trips to the shops.

For as long as markets remain globalised, consumers will need to look beyond price to prevent the most malign corporations from taking the driving seat and from ‘capturing’ democratic governments along the way. [11]  Ethical Consumer has played its part for seventeen years now in developing a culture of opposition to an economic orthodoxy which is clearly now in retreat. We plan to be here for issue 200 in 2023.

References

1 Ethical Consumer magazine Issue 50 – The rise and rise of ethical consumerism. ECRA December 1997. 

2 Co-operative Bank  - Ethical Consumerism Report 2005 December 12th 2005. 

3 Annemieke Wijn of Kraft Foods. Speaking at the TBLI Conference Frankfurt November 3rd 2005. 

4 The Corporation.  Joel Bakan, Free Press 2004. 

5 Capitalism as if the world matters. Jonathan Porritt, Earthscan 2005. 

6 ENDS Report 370 November 2005 – Morely rejects green procurement targets for councils. 

7 Corporate Social Responsibility and the Consumer Movement: Rob Harrison, Consumer Policy Review: July/Aug 2003 Vol 13 No 4. 

8 Phone conversation with Andrea Klag at the ICRT.  6/3/06. 

9 Half Gone – Jeremy Leggett, Portobello Books 2005 

10 See for example Porritt at 5 above. 

11 For a discussion of how companies ‘capture’ democratic governments, see Captive State. George Monbiot.  Macmillan 2000. 

12 André Malraux - was a writer, philosopher and French Minister of Cultural Affairs from 1958 to 1969. 

13 The ECRA 2001 Manifesto for Change, Ethical Consumer issue 70, September 2001 and at www.ethicalconsumer.org/aboutec/manifesto.htm. 

14 See for example figures on www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/ viewed 12/3/06.