About Ethical Consumer

About Ethical Consumer

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

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 pride ourselves on ensuring we minimise our own environmental impacts and carefully assess our supply chain. You can find detail about our ethical policies here. 

We are signed up to the Living Wage Foundation (for paying a real living wage to all employees) and certified by the Fair Tax Foundation (for responsible tax conduct). 

We are also a member of Co-operatives UK which is a network for British co-operatives. Co-operatives UK seeks to empower and support co-operatives to help grow the co-operative economy and create a fairer society.

In 2026 we joined Business Declares, which is a network of members with a purpose of inspiring, encouraging and accelerating action within businesses to address the climate, ecological and social emergencies. 

Our Mission

Ethical Consumer's primary goal is making global businesses more sustainable through consumer pressure.

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. 

See the 5 key elements of our Mission. 

Ethical ratings system

 "When we launched Ethical Consumer in 1989, there was nowhere a shopper could go to find out whether their bank was funding apartheid. Two of us built the first version of this database on a filing cabinet and now it is maintained by a team of dedicated researchers. In 2024 our research database passed 300 individual rating sub-categories, up from the handful we tracked in 1989". Rob Harrison, Co-Founder. 

Now we've developed the world's most sophisticated and simple to use 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 years of work since 1989, conducting primary and secondary research and systematically organising it using our ratings methodology. Stories older than five years will remain on the database as a historical reference but will no longer impact company scores.

The core rating categories are Climate, Company Ethos, Tax Conduct, Workers and Israel-Palestine and each sector then has it's own specific categories. For example Home & Garden has harmful ingredients, animal testing & derivatives, packing and energy efficiency. Each of these categories is then made up of sub-topics which companies are scored against.  

Shopping Guides

On over 100 ethical shopping guides rate brands according to 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.

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 services to campaign groups and organisations such as Amnesty International, Christian Aid, Co-op Bank, and the Guardian.

UK consumer markets report

We produce the Ethical Consumer Markets report, which has been acting as an important barometer of UK spending since 1999. This tracks sales data across a wide range of consumer sectors and publish the findings.

Ethical Consumer is the trading name of:

Ethical Consumer Research Association Ltd
Company Registration Number 30575R (on the Mutuals Public Register)

VAT Number 519643136.

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