Ethical Consumer

Do boycott campaigns help or harm efforts to improve working conditions? Boycott campaigns can be used to improve conditions for workers. But many campaigners believe boycotting can also do more harm than good – for example, by imperilling workers’ jobs or undermining attempts at company negotiations.

Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) programmes are possibly the most impactful way to transform exploitative supply chains and build dignified working conditions. In this article we look at how WSR initiatives started, what makes them different, and how we can support them. Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) programmes improve conditions for workers in the supply chains of major brands. The Fair Food Programme is considered to be the first WSR programme.

BAE Systems, Deloitte and Rolls-Royce Holdings are among the companies whose US-subsidiaries have channelled donations to US politicians. In this article we look at which UK brands are involved, how the donations work, and what action you can take. UK corporations are helping bankroll US politicians accused of “undermining democracy”, according to a new report by Donations and Democracy.

One of the earliest examples of a successful campaign was the boycott in Britain of sugar produced by slaves. In 1791, after Parliament refused to abolish slavery, activists printed thousands of pamphlets encouraging the boycott. Sales of sugar dropped by between a third and a half. By contrast sales of Indian sugar, which were not linked to slavery, rose tenfold in two years.

This document aims to give a high level overview of the site, how it is built and how it integrates with other systems in order to get developers up to speed and tackle support requests. The Ethical Consumer website aims to provide its visitors with reviews of products and services by companies across a wide range of sectors and industries. They make money via a number of different subscriptions which can be purchased via the site.

Here you can find links to all of Ethical Consumer's main research on Palestine and Israel. This includes articles listing the main Israel boycott targets, ethical alternative brands your can support instead, an introduction to the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the importance of boycotting strategically, and brand-specific stories, for example about Barclays and Puma. Palestinian civil society asks people around the world to support their human rights.

Palestinian activists are calling for boycotts of companies linked to the Israeli state and human rights abuses. Here we give the official list of brands and products to avoid. Boycott campaigns are pressuring brands to end their relationships with the Israeli state, and have ramped up pressure since the latest war against Gaza began in 2023.

Hodmedod’s was founded in 2012 to supply beans and other products from British farms. They currently source from farms in Suffolk, Essex, Shropshire, and Cambridgeshire. “Back in 2008, community group Transition Town Norwich asked Nick, William and I to help them work out whether, with climate change in mind, the city could feed itself from surrounding farmland,” says Josiah Meldrum, co-founder of Hodmedod’s alongside Nick Saltmarsh and William Hudson.

According to our latest estimates, Amazon's systematic corporation tax avoidance could have cost UK citizens around £575 million in lost taxes in 2024 alone. This is up from our estimate of a £433 million tax gap in 2023. In this article we look at why tax avoidance has a negative impact on public services, and the wider implications for UK retailers who are paying their fair share of tax. Amazon has had a good year in the UK with income up by around 13%. Profit margins have also been rising.

This is a shopping 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. Learn more about us  → Score table ← Swipe left / right to view table contents → Brand Score(out of 100) Ratings Categories Our Analysis test