Climate action: 10 steps to choosing sustainable brands

When it comes to the environment, buying less is always the best option. But when we need to buy a new item, how do we know which brands are genuinely better?

Below, we discuss what to look for in each sector to avoid the greenwash and find lower-carbon options.

1. Buy second-hand

For many items, such as clothing, tech and furniture, buying second-hand is one of the best ways we can cut our carbon footprint. Luckily, lots of brands offer second-hand options, from Oxfam and Beyond Retro in the clothing sector, to Antiques Are Green and Preloved for second-hand furniture.

We have a separate guide to repairs and buying second-hand.

Clothing

2. Avoid fast fashion

Often, the first steps to buying more sustainable brands can be ruling out the worst culprits. The fashion industry is responsible for around 10% of global emissions, much of which comes from fast fashion brands. Companies underpay workers, sell poorly made garments, and throw away whatever isn’t sold.

Many high street brands are selling fast fashion. Nonetheless there are a few standout worst culprits:

• Boohoo, which also owns the following brands: Burton, Coast, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, Karen Millen, MissPap, Nasty Gal, Oasis, Pretty Little Thing, Wallis, Warehouse
• Forever 21
• In the Style
• I Saw it First
• Missguided
• Shein
• Quiz

See how fast fashion brands rate in our high-street clothing guide or watch our video on five things to know about fast fashion.

3. Look for dedicated ethical clothing brands

Luckily, there are some brands with the primary purpose of providing an ethical alternative. If in doubt, look for companies where the entire business model, clothing design and message appears to be based around doing something better for the planet.

In our ethical clothing guide, we rate and rank 24 dedicated ethical brands. Eight of these received our best rating for their carbon management and reporting: Beyond Retro, Where Does It Come From?, Living Crafts, Rapanui, Kuyichi, THTC Clothing, Birdsong, and MUD Clothes.

Not only were their products offering an environmental alternative, but they had taken steps to actively reduce their carbon footprints. For example, MUD Jeans is striving to create a circular business model that sees its jeans made from 100% recycled materials. It has targets in place to decrease kgCO2e per pair of jeans by 80% by 2030.

4. Look for better fabrics

Most of the emissions for clothing come from the production of the fabric. The carbon cost of clothing can therefore vary greatly depending on what fabric you choose. Wool has three times the footprint per kilo to flax linen (the best fabric when it comes to carbon).

Your best bet is opting for a brand that only uses more sustainable fabrics. Many of the best brands will be explaining how their fabrics are made and what that means in terms of carbon. Our guide to choosing the most sustainable fabrics outlines what to look out for.

As a rule of thumb, recycled fabrics will have a lower carbon footprint than their non-recycled counterparts.

Organic cotton is generally estimated to have about half the emissions of conventionally grown cotton, although it uses more land.

If you’re buying viscose, rayon or modal, look for brands that talk about ‘closed-loop’ processes, or are using Tencel, lyocell or Lenzing Modal. These use fewer toxic chemicals. 

Technology

5. Choose repairable tech

Every new laptop, mobile phone or tablet manufactured has a carbon footprint attached. 

In 2019, the EU published a report which looked at the emissions of various technologies. The report compared the emissions that arose our use of tech to those from their manufacture and disposal. It found that manufacture and disposal accounted for 40–64% for notebooks and 51–92% for smartphones (meaning that the energy we use to power our technologies has a comparably smaller impact).

Perhaps the most effective way to limit the climate impact of your gadgets is therefore by extending their life. Look for brands that are supporting this shift.

For phones: Look for a modular phone. Modular phones are made so that the user can easily repair any problems or broken parts.

For computers: Laptops are typically harder to repair or upgrade than desktop PCs. Look for a user-replaceable battery as an absolute minimum, and ideally replaceable storage drive and RAM as well.

Ifixit has ranked popular laptop models according to repairability: HP’s Elitebooks generally rank well; Macbooks rank very badly. When it comes to durability, lower prices often mean poorer build quality, so forking out for a ‘business class’ laptop can save money in the long run and help the planet.

6. Look for brands only offering ethical options

The tech world has a real lack of dedicated ethical brands – which makes supporting those that are even more worthwhile. Fairphone is by far the most ethical brand of mobile phone available, and offers modular phones.

In other tech markets, you may not be able to find a totally ethical option, but our various technology shopping guides will help you find the best of the bunch and look for the top options when it comes to carbon.

Health and beauty products

7. Find dedicated ethical health and beauty brands

More and more brands are popping up specialising in ethical health and beauty products. In our guide to skincare, a whopping 12 brands received our best buy status for only selling ethical options. Brands like Odylique offer a big range of ethical products from make-up and sunscreen to soap and shampoo.

A good benchmark for whether a company is likely to be ethical is to check for key certification. For example, are all products certified organic? What is their policy on animal testing?

Our health and beauty guides rate and rank companies, including on their approach to cutting carbon.

8. Opt for brands using no or ethical palm oil

Palm oil and its derivatives are found in many health and beauty products. They are used for everything from increasing thickness or viscosity to helping skin to retain moisture, and providing a foaming agent to increasing shelf life. As a result they appear in skincare, shampoo, make-up, soap, sunscreen, perfume, toothpaste and deodorant.

Unfortunately, the palm oil industry has a significant carbon footprint. When peatlands are drained to grow palm, they become flammable, leading to serious fires. In the first 10 months of 2019, these fires released an amount of CO2 close to the UK’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Palm oil and its derivatives can be hidden behind over 200 different names in ingredients lists. Looking for brands that don’t use any palm oil can be a great way to avoid its impacts.

Alternatively, you might want to look for brands only using sustainable palm. Unfortunately, we can’t always trust brands’ claims, because the main sustainability certification for palm oil (RSPO) isn’t all that strong. Ethical Consumer has therefore looked into what brands are actually doing when it comes to palm oil sourcing, and picked out the best of the bunch in our palm oil guides.

9. Choose reusable brands

For lots of health and beauty products, making the shift to reusable items can help to cut carbon.

For example, Merkur offers reusable, traditional, safety razors. For menstrual products, Mooncup, Organicups, Fair Squared, Kind Organic and Totm all offer reusable menstrual cups; Aisle offer washable pants and period pads and Isevimse offer organic washable pads and tampons.

Household appliances

10. Check the energy ratings

Energy efficiency is crucial when it comes to household appliances. For many of these items, a significant proportion of emissions arise during use (as opposed to manufacture or disposal). For example, 90% of emissions from fridges come from their use, and for dishwashers the figure may be even higher than that.

Luckily, the majority of household appliances have to come with energy efficiency labels, which tell you how much energy they use. This includes fridges and freezers, washing machines and washer-dryers, dishwashers, TVs and electronic displays and light-sources.

The label will give you a rating from A to G, with A being the best performing. In some markets A rated products are not yet available, as the recently revised grading scheme is designed to leave room for future innovation. Our article on revised energy labels has more information.

Why is buying sustainable brands important?

Our consumer goods account for 10% of our total consumer emissions. But the carbon footprints of different brands will greatly vary depending on their practices.

Fast fashion brands sell £2 tops off the back of appalling production in the global South. Computer manufacturers design for obsolescence, meaning that your laptop will be unusable far before the end of its life. Health and beauty companies pump their products full of palm oil, irregardless of the impact on forests around the world.

By choosing more sustainable brands, we’re not only likely to lower our own carbon footprints, we’re voting with our wallets. We’re placing pressure on the worst companies to address their emissions.

You can read more about how to spot green or eco companies in a separate article.