Ethical Consumer
  1. You are in:
  2. Home
  3. Promote your business with Ethical Consumer
  4. About Ethical Consumer Magazine's Best Buy Label

About Ethical Consumer Magazine’s Best Buy Label

Best Buy Label scheme with BB label logo against blue and green background

Ethical Consumer has been licensing the Ethical Consumer Magazine Best Buy Label as a trademark since 2003. Companies can purchase a licence on an annual basis to promote their products and services. 

The ‘butterfly’ label can be used on packaging, websites, marketing and all other promotional material.

This page explains the Best Buy Label, its benefits for your business, and how to apply.

How the Best Buy Label can benefit your business

The Ethical Consumer Magazine Best Buy Label is awarded only to products whose environmental and ethical records warrant it. 

This endorsement from an established and trusted name within the ethical community can help to communicate the core environmental and ethical values that your product represents. 

As the dramatic growth of the ethical sector continues, the Best Buy Label can be a valuable addition to your product's strategic marketing and positioning within an increasingly competitive market.

How the Best Buy Label differs from other accreditation schemes

Companies can gain accreditation with schemes such as those run by B Corp, the Fairtrade Foundation, Soil Association and Vegetarian Society provided they fulfil these organisations’ strict criteria.

The Best Buy Label scheme differs from all these schemes in one key way.

Ethical Consumer's benchmarking system is unique because it first examines a company's ethics and then checks the ethics of each product under review.

Many schemes, like Fairtrade or the Leaping Bunny will certify a product but not necessarily look at the ethics of the company which makes them. 

Some schemes, like B Corp, examine a company's ethics, but they don't examine in detail all the products that each company makes.

In this way we believe that we provide one of the most comprehensive ethical accreditation schemes available.

The benefits of using the Label

Here are some quotes from companies who've signed up to the Best Buy Label scheme.

"We signed up to the Ethical Consumer Best Buy Label scheme because we value its independence. As our ethical credentials are a cornerstone of our brand and mission, the Best Buy Label is an important testimonial to make current and future members of the Society aware of when considering our products."
Jon Lee, Product Development Manager, Ecology Building Society

"The Ethical Consumer Best Buy Label is fantastic as it provides a reliable, independent and rigorous standard ensuring only the greenest, ethical and most environmentally friendly products are recognised. Our industry is riddled with consumer confusion so having a scheme that identifies which products are genuinely ethical is tremendously important as it provides customers with peace of mind, allowing them to make an assured purchase. "
Martin Saunders, Head of Marketing, Good Energy

"We like to communicate the values that we work hard to maintain and which are so important to us. We don't always have, and can't always afford, a lot of space to describe what we do and how we go about it. The Ethical Consumer Best Buy Label which we put on our boxes and tubes helps us to tell our customers that we genuinely care."
Richard Austin, Managing Director, Kingfisher Natural Toothpaste

"Suma are proud to have a very strong ethical policy relating to products, people and trading methods. As a trusted mark within the ethical market place the Ethical Consumer Best Buy Label is ideal for us to use to market our business and products with honesty and openness to consumers who wish to be ethically certain in an increasingly competitive market."
Rob Sherwell, Suma

Purchasing the Best Buy Label

The scheme operates on a sliding scale based on the gross annual sales of the product or products to which the Best Buys label applies.

Annual label licence fees start at £245 per year for small companies with small sales levels. They can rise to £12,995 for larger ones with correspondingly larger sales figures.

Please contact Simon Birch on birch@ethicalconsumer.org to find our more detail about what a licence might cost in your particular circumstances.

FAQs

One year.

Yes, but you will need to disclose any changes to your company or product.

No. Whilst we conduct research on the ethical and environmental record of the company behind the product, the Best Buy Label relates only to the product or service in question, not the company. 

It may do. There is an obligation within the terms of the agreement to inform us of any changes.

There are two ways to gain the Best Buy Label.

The first is by being rated as a recommended Best Buy in one of our product guides which makes you eligible to sign up to our Best Buy Label scheme.  We will often contact you if this is the case.

The second is to be screened by us.

Using the same stringent ethical assessment criteria as for our product guides, any company's product or service which rates very highly in our standard ethical screening process is eligible to sign up to our Best Buy Label scheme.  The screening involves completing a detailed questionnaire.

The main difference in this approach is that companies who gain their Best Buy status via a screening won't appear in our regular product guides. Instead they'll be listed in our directory of Best Buy brands.

And whilst the cost of the Best Buy Label will remain the same, there will be a charge of £225 + VAT for the screening.

However if a company would like the Best Buy Label to apply to multiple brands, then we would be happy to negotiate a discount on this price.

The screening and charges would take place every two years.

Finally, there'll be an additional questionnaire prior to the screening questionnaire to enable us to assess whether or not a company is likely to be invited to sign up to the Best Buy Label scheme.

This avoids companies having to pay for a screening and then not be able to sign up to the scheme.

We're calling this initial questionnaire an 'Ethical Health Check' and there'll be no charge for this service.

Read our separate page on how to apply for a screening and about the questionnaires. 

Any company can gain accreditation from these national organisations so long as they fulfil the respective criteria.

What’s unique about the Ethical Consumer Magazine Best Buy Label is that it’s the only accreditation scheme that looks in detail at the ethical record of the company behind the product and the environmental and ethical record of the product itself.

Plus unlike other schemes, companies can only be invited to apply for a label by Ethical Consumer once we’re satisfied that they are indeed an ethical and environmental best buy.

Far from confusing shoppers, we believe that the Best Buy Label brings much needed clarity to an increasingly complicated market. 

Currently a product could be certified organic but not be vegetarian; a Fairtrade product need not be organic and finally a product could have all three accreditations but be made by a controversial multi-national corporation.

Because the Ethical Consumer is an established and trusted name within the ethical market, shoppers will be reassured that when buying a product or service carrying our Best Buy Label they’re making the best possible ethical choice.

Yes. You can choose to start using the scheme whenever you like, providing that in the interim nothing has changed to either your company or your product. If anything has changed with either your company or product, Ethical Consumer will undertake to re-rate your company to ensure that it still meets our best buy
criteria.

We're happy to hear from companies whose products and services aren't covered by our product guides. In this case we'd recommend that you apply for an ethical screening, see FAQ 5.

They are contained within the licensing agreement.

We've signed up over 40 of the UK's most ethical companies. 

The current list is available on the Best Buy Label directory page.

How to proceed

If you're interested in our Best Buy Label scheme please contact Simon Birch: 0796 9086136 or drop him an email: birch@ethicalconsumer.org.

Also of interest

We always check the ethics of our advertisers