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About Ethical Consumer

At the heart of the ethical consumer movement, since 1989.

Ethics Made Easy

Each day we all make choices according to our personal ethics. Ethical Consumer provides the tools and resources you need to make these choices simple, informed and effective.

Some of this information is free to access, while the full set of tools is available for a small yearly subscription, which in turn helps fund our work.

Our income comes entirely from:

  • reader subscriptions 
  • consultancy work for campaign groups and ethical organisations 
  • adverts from ethically vetted companies, grants and other income 

We are an independent, not-for-profit, multi-stakeholder co-operative with open membership, founded in 1989 and based in Manchester.

Our mission

Shopping Guides & Ethical Ratings

We've developed the world's most sophisticated and simple to use, personal ethical rating system to give you the information you need, based on detailed research of over 40,000 companies, brands and products.

These ratings are updated in real time from our corporate research database. The database is a result of over 20 years work conducting primary and secondary research and systematically organising it using our ratings system. Our ratings cover around 300 topics in 19 areas in 5 main categories. We continue to update it daily. 

You can personalise our 100+ ethical shopping guides in a way that accurately reflects the issues that are most important to you - be that animal testing, climate change, sweatshop labour, GM crops, nuclear power or whatever.

Subscribers can also access detailed product, brand & company information.

Here is an overview and video about our shopping guides, company profiles, and how to use them.

Or take a look st some of our most popular guides:

Ethical Consumer Magazine

The UK's leading alternative consumer magazine, published 6 times a year.

Available as a paper copy delivered to your door, as a flip-book or as a digital download.

Sign up to our weekly newsletter to receive a free copy of a magazine.

Campaigning and Challenging Corporate Power

For over 30 years we have been the hub of the ethical consumer movement, helping consumers to shop ethically, campaigners to challenge corporate power and businesses to improve their supply chains.

Our mission is to make global businesses more sustainable through consumer pressure.

We run campaigns on key ethical issues and are currently campaigning for a boycott against Amazon for their use of tax avoidance. We also collaborate on The Lush Prize, and set up the Fair Tax Mark and Save Our Bank.

Research & Consultancy

We provide research and consultancy for campaign groups and organisations such as Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Co-op Bank, and the Guardian.

Consumer markets report

We also produce the Ethical Consumer Markets report. This has been acting as an important barometer of UK spending since 1999.

We track sales data across a wide range of consumer sectors and publish the findings.

More useful links

Fair Tax Mar, Living Wage and Co-ops UK certified

Ethical Consumer is the trading name of:

Ethical Consumer Research Association Ltd
Company Registration Number 30575 R

VAT Number 519643136.

Unit 21, 41 Old Birley Street, Manchester, M15 5RF, UK