This is a buyers' guide from Ethical Consumer, the UK's leading alternative consumer organisation. Since 1989 we've been researching and recording the social and environmental records of companies, and making the results available to you in a simple format.
Research Report Download - includes all the detailed research behind this buyers' guide.
The report includes:
The Full Score Table for this report is only available to Subscribers.
To access all of our web tools and data, and get the magazine - start your 4 Week Trial subscription today.
Score Ratings
Our ratings are live updated scores from our primary research database. They are based on primary and secondary research across 19 categories. Find out more about our ethical ratings.
Score table
The score table shows simple numerical ratings for each product.
Move the sliders to customise these scores.
Click on a product name to see the stories behind the score (subscribers only).
Full Scorecard
The Full Scorecard shows the 'black marks' for each product, by each of the 19 categories. The bigger the mark, the worse the score. So for example a big black circle under 'Worker Rights' shows that the company making this product has been severely criticised for worker abuses.
The Full Scorecard is only available to subscribers. Click on the More Detail link at the top of the score table to access it.
Customising Rating Scores
Move the sliders to change the weighting given to each category. You can open up each of the 5 main categories by clicking on the + sign. This way you can compare products according to what's ethically important to YOU.
Saving Your Customised Weightings
You must be signed-in to save your customisations. The weightings you have given to each category will be saved premanently (subscribers) or only for this visit to the site (registered users). Once set, they will be used to calculate the scores in all the buyers' guides that you view.
Stories and Data behind the scores
To see all the stories and research data behind the ratings you'll need to be a subscriber.
As our ratings are constantly updated, it is possible that company ratings on the ethiscore website may have changed since this report was written.
For red sauce, Meridian and Whole Earth are best. Granovita is best for brown sauce. All these brands are organic varieties.
The most well-known brands of sauce - Heinz Tomato Ketchup, HP and Daddies - are all owned by HJ Heinz. The company is currently embroiled in criticism from the Transport and General Workers Union for shifting production of HP Sauce from the UK to the Netherlands with the loss of 120 jobs.(1) There are companies offering organic, more natural sauces, like Granovita and Whole Earth, but these are also owned by fairly large companies these days. Meridian Foods management bought the company out of larger Greencore in 2005. None of the companies covered received ECRA’s best marks for environmental reporting or supply chain codes covering workers’ rights. Glass bottles are much more likely to find their way into the recycling.
References: 1 www.tgwu.org.uk 9/5/06