Alisa Gravitz: Every time you spend a dollar, it goes to work in the world. Whether you're buying an article of clothing, household staples like food or cleaning products, or a major purchase like a car, your dollars are having an impact. They affect the workers that took part in making that product, the environment that supplied the raw materials and where pollution is dumped and the health and safety of the communities where corporations and contractors locate.
Too often our purchases can end up supporting systems we would never support if we saw their consequences up close: pollution of our air and water, abuse of workers across the supply chain, exploitation of our precious natural resources, and on and on.
It doesn't have to be that way. When we make purchases, we can consider all of the costs: the immediate cost to our wallets, but also the broader costs to people and the planet. We all want a better world for our children and grandchildren. When we purchase from companies that pay their workers a living wage, work to reduce their impact on the environment, and promote thriving communities, we are "voting" with our dollars for a world in which we all want to live.
Voting with our dollars is core to the mission of Co-op America. We work to harness economic power — the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace — to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. Our Shop & Unshop website is filled with tips and strategies to help people begin ethical purchasing today.
POV: Some people may be more accustomed to seeing consumer activism through boycotts — is encouraging consumers to make informed, ethical choices as effective? Does ethical consuming accomplish different things?
Gravitz: Ethical consuming includes and goes way beyond boycott actions against individual companies, and can include all of our purchasing choices. The first step for many people is to simply rethink consumption. Before you make a purchase, stop to think, "Is this item really necessary?" Lower levels of consumption mean a lower impact on the planet. The second step, then, is when you purchase to "buy green and fair," which involves an implicit boycott of irresponsible companies.
Another step is to tell companies you are concerned about their conduct. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Co-op America members have sent messages to some of the largest companies in the U.S. that successfully encouraged them to improve their labor or environmental practices.
All these strategies can work together. As an example, many people are concerned about sweatshop labor issues in the apparel industry. To have the greatest impact on this issue, Co-op America encourages them to 1) avoid the worst companies, while 2) joining with other consumers in sending a message demanding better from companies that have poor records on sweatshop labor issues and 3) shifting their purchases to companies that have the highest labor standards and third-party monitoring of their labor conditions. (Many of the companies in this category can be found in our National Green Pages™.)
By taking this multilayered approach, consumers are shifting their dollars to the best companies — helping these companies to grow and demonstrating that ethical practices and corporate profitability can co-exist — while also sending a message to companies with poor labor practices that they need to improve or they will experience damage to their brand and lose market share and profitability.
POV: Can you share some examples of consumer influence helping to improve corporate behavior — labor practices or environmental policies or corporate policies?
Gravitz: As major stakeholders in companies that can have a profound impact on the bottom line, consumers have a powerful voice with corporate America. Research has shown that companies will often make major changes with just a small number of their consumers complaining — sometimes as few as 2 percent — because they know that every consumer talks to at least 10 to 20 other people when they are upset. In today's electronic world, people can put up blogs or send emails that go viral. As a result, there are many examples of companies that listened to their consumers and changed their practices. To name a recent few:
Boycotts and consumer pressure helped pushed both Nike and Yum! Brands (owners of Taco Bell) to acknowledge problems with their suppliers' or contractors' labor practices and begin to make improvements.
Consumer pressure against Home Depot played a major role in stopping Home Depot from selling wood from endangered old-growth forests, and to begin offering FSC-certified™ products made from sustainably harvested wood.
Consumer pressure on Procter & Gamble resulted in greater offerings of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee and convinced Citigroup to end its predatory lending practices.
Co-op America and its members played an important role in these and many other successful campaigns. In most cases we worked with allies in the social investing, faith, environmental or social justice communities to create extensive pressure from multiple stakeholders on the companies targeted. The more stakeholders that raise an issue with a company, the more likely the company will be to listen and then change its practices. Co-op America's role is to make sure that consumers, as stakeholders, understand the important role they need to play in corporate responsibility and mobilize their voices along with those of investors and social and environmental advocates. Our latest action, encouraging GM and Ford to improve fuel economy and reduce global warming, is on our homepage.
POV: How does the idea of ethical consuming or investing fit into day-to-day life? Is it a never-ending commitment, a single factor when making choices, or something else?
Gravitz: Ethical consuming is a joyful and rewarding day-to-day commitment, and it's easy to start taking small steps by picking one area in your life to target. Maybe you start by choosing greener cleaners for your home, or by purchasing only sweatshop-free clothing, or by switching to organic and locally grown food, or by targeting your energy efficiency.
Lourdes, whose life is chronicled in Maquilapolis, lives in a neighborhood in Tijuana that has not just ordinary sewage running down the middle of the street, but a toxic stew of chemicals and manufacturing agents from the factories on the mesa above their homes.
Whichever area, partner with a friend or make it a family project to research and discover the best options in your category. Co-op America can help you with our resources. Our Responsible Shopper describes the problems with the largest corporations within dozens of categories, National Green Pages lists the greenest companies, and the Real Money newsletter offers green-living tips, with consumer resources attached to each article.
Once you've tackled one spending category, choose another one. It only gets easier, and it's fun and satisfying. It improves your health and quality of life — your organic food is more delicious, your energy-efficient home is cozier and your energy bills are lower. Most importantly, each step you take means a positive return for people and the planet.
POV: Where does one draw the line when pursuing an ethical consumer choice? Are there always tradeoffs or compromises involved? How do we balance our values within a budget?
Gravitz: It's a myth that ethical or green consuming automatically results in spending more money. Those energy-efficient lightbulbs cost far less over their lifetime than conventional bulbs; fair trade organic coffee often costs the same price as other Arabica bean coffees, and a wardrobe that mixes quality used clothing with eco-friendly fabrics sewn under fair labor conditions is cheaper than any clothing shopping spree at the mall.
For example, I recently bought a great used no-wrinkle basic black travel suit for $40 at a vintage clothing store — and a beautiful all-organic cotton suit for $355 that is suitable to wear to negotiate for greater corporate responsibility in any boardroom. That's two suits for $395 — less than $200 each. I'm set for the season. And neither suit needs dry cleaning — which saves money over the life of the garments, and also prevents the harmful chemicals associated with dry cleaning from polluting the environment. With strategies like these, my family has shifted to more ethical clothing purchases while cutting our clothing budget in half!
What's more, often the most ethical choice is to save money and skip a purchase that you don't really need. For example, many of us feel compelled to buy products to give to friends and families for birthdays or holidays, though many of the gifts we purchase go unused. Get creative instead and give a non-material gift — free babysitting or a home-cooked meal, for example. Your gift will be extra-meaningful for its simplicity and thoughtfulness.
POV: The film Maquilapolis focuses on women in Tijuana who work in a factory that makes televisions, and it seems that electronics are a particularly troubling industry when it comes to making ethical consumer choices. Is there a way for consumers to have an impact in a situation where every choice is a difficult one, and there may not be an ideal ethical option?
Gravitz: Stay informed and raise your voice. Tell the companies you buy from that you expect third-party monitoring of their manufacturing facilities and that you won't tolerate sweatshop conditions in the supply chain. Make it clear that you expect them not to just simply fire the sweatshops, but work with their contractors to turn sweatshops into safe workplaces that pay a living wage.
Over the summer, when the British Daily Mail exposed sweatshop conditions in the supply chains of several makers of handheld electronic devices, Apple (one of the implicated companies) sent its own inspectors in immediately afterward and announced they had found conditions that did not meet the company's own supply chain standards. Making sure that consumers react when they hear news of wrongdoing in corporate supply chains is key to pressuring more and more companies to establish codes of conduct and third-party monitoring, and to take labor abuses by their suppliers more seriously. Call, write or email the company and tell them you are outraged. Co-op America's Responsible Shopper and Action Center make it easy for you to contact companies.
POV: Besides making informed choices, how can consumers be active to encourage more responsible corporate behavior that is in line with their values?
Gravitz: First, reach out to others and support them in making their own informed choices. Sometimes, by working together you can accomplish more, and take even more steps for sustainability. For example at your office, school or place of worship you can encourage the purchase of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee and tea — helping to build the market for Fair Trade Certified™ products in the US and teaching a wide range of people about fair trade as an issue. You can also work with others in your community to have a voice when corporations directly impact your lives, such as banding together to prevent polluting power plants from being located in your town.
Second, remember that your investor power can also help bring about more responsible corporate behavior. As a shareholder, you have the power to demand change at companies where you are part-owner and the power to withdraw your investment if the company refuses to improve, and the power to support the growth of responsible businesses. Investors in the clean-energy sector are reporting especially strong returns right now. You can learn more at Co-op America's social investing center.
Third, support organizations that are working for corporate responsibility, and finally, recognize that your informed consumer choices aren't just made in the aisles of a store. Everything you purchase — including the energy used to power your home or airline tickets for travel — has an impact. When you're in the habit of "greening" each purchase you make, it will become second nature to write to your energy company to ask for more investments in renewables, or offset the carbon emissions of your travel.
We invite everyone to join with us at Co-op America in this important work of using our consumer power to bring about greater corporate accountability and to grow the green economy, bringing more and more safe, healthy, eco-friendly products and services to market.
Next: Dan Porter »
Dan Porter: Each of our decisions, whether we know it or not, is promoting certain activities and advancing certain values. The question is, what activities and values are you supporting with your purchase? If you buy paper products created by clear cutting old-growth forests you are supporting that activity and a certain set of values. If you buy paper products made from recycled materials, you are supporting that activity and a different set of values.
The marketplace pays a great deal of attention to consumer behavior. Companies spend huge amounts of money on market research and even more on building their brands. Studies by Interbrand and others indicate that a company's brands often make up a substantial portion of the overall value of the company. This is particularly true with companies that cater to consumers. So companies pay a lot of attention when their products or brands slump or take off.
Ethical or conscious consuming is a logical extension of taking price and quality into consideration. "Quality" already includes certain characteristics (safety, reliability) that are connected to ethical and sustainable practices. Ethical companies do not knowingly make unsafe products. And when they realize a product is unsafe, they do something about it. What we normally think of as the "price" of a product is how much we have to pay for it. If you look at a broader context than just that transaction, however, the true cost of a product or a company's practices in producing products is often much more than what we are paying. Who is picking up the tab for those costs? Ultimately, we are, through degraded environmental conditions, climate-change impacts and higher health-care costs.
Being more conscious and ethical about your economic decisions will also add a level of satisfaction that you can't otherwise get from buying a product. It's the satisfaction of knowing that you are acting in closer alignment with your values. You may not always have a clear-cut choice, but if you make the choice consciously, both you and the world are more likely to benefit.
POV: Some people may be more accustomed to seeing consumer activism through boycotts — is encouraging consumers to make informed, ethical choices as effective? Does ethical consuming accomplish different things
Porter: Boycotts are actually a concentrated form of ethical, conscious consuming. A group of consumers, often prompted by nonprofit or watch-dog organizations, makes a conscious decision not to buy a certain brand or from a certain retailer. They can be a very effective way to address specific issues with specific companies and, sometimes indirectly, with industries. Because a boycott is focused, usually on a particular company, it often produces a faster and more focused result.
An aerial view of several maquiladora manufacturing and assembly plants located just south of the US-Mexico border.Alisa Gravitz, Director, Co-op America
September 2006
POV: Many of us are accustomed to shopping and making other consumer choices based only on price and quality. Why should we factor in ethical considerations when making consumer decisions?
Too often our purchases can end up supporting systems we would never support if we saw their consequences up close: pollution of our air and water, abuse of workers across the supply chain, exploitation of our precious natural resources, and on and on.
It doesn't have to be that way. When we make purchases, we can consider all of the costs: the immediate cost to our wallets, but also the broader costs to people and the planet. We all want a better world for our children and grandchildren. When we purchase from companies that pay their workers a living wage, work to reduce their impact on the environment, and promote thriving communities, we are "voting" with our dollars for a world in which we all want to live.
Voting with our dollars is core to the mission of Co-op America. We work to harness economic power -- the strength of consumers, investors, businesses, and the marketplace -- to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society. Our Shop & Unshop website is filled with tips and strategies to help people begin ethical purchasing today.
POV: Some people may be more accustomed to seeing consumer activism through boycotts -- is encouraging consumers to make informed, ethical choices as effective? Does ethical consuming accomplish different things?
Another step is to tell companies you are concerned about their conduct. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Co-op America members have sent messages to some of the largest companies in the U.S. that successfully encouraged them to improve their labor or environmental practices.
All these strategies can work together. As an example, many people are concerned about sweatshop labor issues in the apparel industry. To have the greatest impact on this issue, Co-op America encourages them to 1) avoid the worst companies, while 2) joining with other consumers in sending a message demanding better from companies that have poor records on sweatshop labor issues and 3) shifting their purchases to companies that have the highest labor standards and third-party monitoring of their labor conditions. (Many of the companies in this category can be found in our National Green Pages™.)
By taking this multilayered approach, consumers are shifting their dollars to the best companies -- helping these companies to grow and demonstrating that ethical practices and corporate profitability can co-exist -- while also sending a message to companies with poor labor practices that they need to improve or they will experience damage to their brand and lose market share and profitability.
POV: Can you share some examples of consumer influence helping to improve corporate behavior -- labor practices or environmental policies or corporate policies?
Gravitz: As major stakeholders in companies that can have a profound impact on the bottom line, consumers have a powerful voice with corporate America. Research has shown that companies will often make major changes with just a small number of their consumers complaining -- sometimes as few as 2 percent -- because they know that every consumer talks to at least 10 to 20 other people when they are upset. In today's electronic world, people can put up blogs or send emails that go viral. As a result, there are many examples of companies that listened to their consumers and changed their practices. To name a recent few:
Boycotts and consumer pressure helped pushed both Nike and Yum! Brands (owners of Taco Bell) to acknowledge problems with their suppliers' or contractors' labor practices and begin to make improvements.
Consumer pressure against Home Depot played a major role in stopping Home Depot from selling wood from endangered old-growth forests, and to begin offering FSC-certified™ products made from sustainably harvested wood.
Consumer pressure on Procter & Gamble resulted in greater offerings of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee and convinced Citigroup to end its predatory lending practices.
Co-op America and its members played an important role in these and many other successful campaigns. In most cases we worked with allies in the social investing, faith, environmental or social justice communities to create extensive pressure from multiple stakeholders on the companies targeted. The more stakeholders that raise an issue with a company, the more likely the company will be to listen and then change its practices. Co-op America's role is to make sure that consumers, as stakeholders, understand the important role they need to play in corporate responsibility and mobilize their voices along with those of investors and social and environmental advocates. Our latest action, encouraging GM and Ford to improve fuel economy and reduce global warming, is on our homepage.
POV: How does the idea of ethical consuming or investing fit into day-to-day life? Is it a never-ending commitment, a single factor when making choices, or something else?
Gravitz: Ethical consuming is a joyful and rewarding day-to-day commitment, and it's easy to start taking small steps by picking one area in your life to target. Maybe you start by choosing greener cleaners for your home, or by purchasing only sweatshop-free clothing, or by switching to organic and locally grown food, or by targeting your energy efficiency.
Whichever area, partner with a friend or make it a family project to research and discover the best options in your category. Co-op America can help you with our resources. Our Responsible Shopper describes the problems with the largest corporations within dozens of categories, National Green Pages lists the greenest companies, and the Real Money newsletter offers green-living tips, with consumer resources attached to each article.
Once you've tackled one spending category, choose another one. It only gets easier, and it's fun and satisfying. It improves your health and quality of life -- your organic food is more delicious, your energy-efficient home is cozier and your energy bills are lower. Most importantly, each step you take means a positive return for people and the planet.
POV: Where does one draw the line when pursuing an ethical consumer choice? Are there always tradeoffs or compromises involved? How do we balance our values within a budget?
Gravitz: It's a myth that ethical or green consuming automatically results in spending more money. Those energy-efficient lightbulbs cost far less over their lifetime than conventional bulbs; fair trade organic coffee often costs the same price as other Arabica bean coffees, and a wardrobe that mixes quality used clothing with eco-friendly fabrics sewn under fair labor conditions is cheaper than any clothing shopping spree at the mall.
For example, I recently bought a great used no-wrinkle basic black travel suit for $40 at a vintage clothing store -- and a beautiful all-organic cotton suit for $355 that is suitable to wear to negotiate for greater corporate responsibility in any boardroom. That's two suits for $395 -- less than $200 each. I'm set for the season. And neither suit needs dry cleaning -- which saves money over the life of the garments, and also prevents the harmful chemicals associated with dry cleaning from polluting the environment. With strategies like these, my family has shifted to more ethical clothing purchases while cutting our clothing budget in half!
What's more, often the most ethical choice is to save money and skip a purchase that you don't really need. For example, many of us feel compelled to buy products to give to friends and families for birthdays or holidays, though many of the gifts we purchase go unused. Get creative instead and give a non-material gift -- free babysitting or a home-cooked meal, for example. Your gift will be extra-meaningful for its simplicity and thoughtfulness.
POV: The film Maquilapolis focuses on women in Tijuana who work in a factory that makes televisions, and it seems that electronics are a particularly troubling industry when it comes to making ethical consumer choices. Is there a way for consumers to have an impact in a situation where every choice is a difficult one, and there may not be an ideal ethical option?
Gravitz: Stay informed and raise your voice. Tell the companies you buy from that you expect third-party monitoring of their manufacturing facilities and that you won't tolerate sweatshop conditions in the supply chain. Make it clear that you expect them not to just simply fire the sweatshops, but work with their contractors to turn sweatshops into safe workplaces that pay a living wage.
Over the summer, when the British Daily Mail exposed sweatshop conditions in the supply chains of several makers of handheld electronic devices, Apple (one of the implicated companies) sent its own inspectors in immediately afterward and announced they had found conditions that did not meet the company's own supply chain standards. Making sure that consumers react when they hear news of wrongdoing in corporate supply chains is key to pressuring more and more companies to establish codes of conduct and third-party monitoring, and to take labor abuses by their suppliers more seriously. Call, write or email the company and tell them you are outraged. Co-op America's Responsible Shopper and Action Center make it easy for you to contact companies.
POV: Besides making informed choices, how can consumers be active to encourage more responsible corporate behavior that is in line with their values?
Gravitz: First, reach out to others and support them in making their own informed choices. Sometimes, by working together you can accomplish more, and take even more steps for sustainability. For example at your office, school or place of worship you can encourage the purchase of Fair Trade Certified™ coffee and tea -- helping to build the market for Fair Trade Certified™ products in the US and teaching a wide range of people about fair trade as an issue. You can also work with others in your community to have a voice when corporations directly impact your lives, such as banding together to prevent polluting power plants from being located in your town.
Second, remember that your investor power can also help bring about more responsible corporate behavior. As a shareholder, you have the power to demand change at companies where you are part-owner and the power to withdraw your investment if the company refuses to improve, and the power to support the growth of responsible businesses. Investors in the clean-energy sector are reporting especially strong returns right now. You can learn more at Co-op America's social investing center.
Third, support organizations that are working for corporate responsibility, and finally, recognize that your informed consumer choices aren't just made in the aisles of a store. Everything you purchase -- including the energy used to power your home or airline tickets for travel -- has an impact. When you're in the habit of "greening" each purchase you make, it will become second nature to write to your energy company to ask for more investments in renewables, or offset the carbon emissions of your travel.
We invite everyone to join with us at Co-op America in this important work of using our consumer power to bring about greater corporate accountability and to grow the green economy, bringing more and more safe, healthy, eco-friendly products and services to market.
Next: Dan Porter »
Alisa Gravitz is the director of Co-op America.
Five dollar bill associated image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/publicdomainphotos/ / CC BY 2.0
Related Links
» The RoHS Directive stands for "the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment." Read more about this new European Union regulation.
» Grist magazine: WEEE are the World
Find out more about how new E.U. environmental standards are changing the global marketplace. (Sept. 2005)
Dan Porter: VP of Marketing, Idealworks
POV: Many of us are accustomed to shopping and making other consumer choices based only on price and quality. Why should we factor in ethical considerations when making consumer decisions?
The marketplace pays a great deal of attention to consumer behavior. Companies spend huge amounts of money on market research and even more on building their brands. Studies by Interbrand and others indicate that a company's brands often make up a substantial portion of the overall value of the company. This is particularly true with companies that cater to consumers. So companies pay a lot of attention when their products or brands slump or take off.
Ethical or conscious consuming is a logical extension of taking price and quality into consideration. "Quality" already includes certain characteristics (safety, reliability) that are connected to ethical and sustainable practices. Ethical companies do not knowingly make unsafe products. And when they realize a product is unsafe, they do something about it. What we normally think of as the "price" of a product is how much we have to pay for it. If you look at a broader context than just that transaction, however, the true cost of a product or a company's practices in producing products is often much more than what we are paying. Who is picking up the tab for those costs? Ultimately, we are, through degraded environmental conditions, climate-change impacts and higher health-care costs.
Being more conscious and ethical about your economic decisions will also add a level of satisfaction that you can't otherwise get from buying a product. It's the satisfaction of knowing that you are acting in closer alignment with your values. You may not always have a clear-cut choice, but if you make the choice consciously, both you and the world are more likely to benefit.
POV: Some people may be more accustomed to seeing consumer activism through boycotts -- is encouraging consumers to make informed, ethical choices as effective? Does ethical consuming accomplish different things
Porter: Boycotts are actually a concentrated form of ethical, conscious consuming. A group of consumers, often prompted by nonprofit or watch-dog organizations, makes a conscious decision not to buy a certain brand or from a certain retailer. They can be a very effective way to address specific issues with specific companies and, sometimes indirectly, with industries. Because a boycott is focused, usually on a particular company, it often produces a faster and more focused result.
Broader applications of ethical or conscious consuming have a less immediate impact. The impact is often derived more from the carrot than the stick, but it can be more profound. What you are really doing with conscious consumption is providing feedback to the market. Usually, when the market gets a sufficient amount of feedback, it responds. If enough people make certain choices, companies begin to see a trend and then seek to capitalize on that trend. In trying to capitalize on the opportunity, the company often changes its production and marketing practices. If the trend reveals a greater demand for more ethical and sustainable products and business practices, the company ends up not only changing its products and practices -- it ends up promoting sustainability.
POV: Can you share some examples of consumer influence helping to improve corporate behavior -- labor practices or environmental policies or corporate policies
Porter: One of the best examples of consumer influence is organics. As more and more people have made conscious choices about purchasing organic foods, the organic industry has grown. Today millions of acres are farmed without pesticides -- which is a huge boon to the environment and arguably to the health of consumers. The transition from a small movement to a market phenomenon hasn't been perfect. Some say organic has lost its soul, but the implications of major corporations seeking to address the organic market extend beyond the immediate benefits to the environment and consumers. As companies seek to enter the market or expand their market share, they promote and advertise their products, which further extends the public's awareness of the importance of the food they eat and the manner in which it was produced. This will, in turn, start to make some people think differently about what goes into their cleaning products, furnishings, and clothes. And all this started with a relatively small group of producers and consumers making conscious choices about what to grow and eat.
Another good example is the significant movement by a number of cosmetic companies away from testing their products on animals. In this case, high-profile boycotts helped raise consumer awareness about the issue. At the same time, the explosive growth of companies like The Body Shop proved that there was substantial consumer demand for animal-test-free products.
POV: How does the idea of ethical consuming or investing fit into day-to-day life? Is it a never-ending commitment, a single factor when making choices, or something else
Porter: Ethical consuming or investing is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It is trying to be conscious about your economic decisions as often as you can. Nobody, except maybe the Dalai Lama, does consciousness perfectly. This is one of those situations where perfection is the enemy of progress. So don't worry about getting it right --just start thinking about what is really important to you and paying attention when you shop. If you care about a specific issue, start with that. Each of our purchases provides feedback to producers and the marketplace. Sometimes you can see an impact with a small local business. On a grander scale, the impact of a person's choices may seem invisible, but when large numbers of people begin to make similar choices, the market will respond.
Ethical consuming is ultimately about being conscious about your purchases and whether they align with your values and give you what you really want. Are they good for you? Are they supporting the kind of world you want to live in or leave to your children? Very few people behave "consciously" all the time --it's really hard to do, given the pace of modern life. But when you do something consciously, it almost always changes your experience of the activity for the better. This applies whether you are in a business meeting, driving a car, enjoying another person's company or shopping.
There is a subtle yet powerful satisfaction in taking actions that align with your values.
POV: Where does one draw the line when pursuing an ethical consumer choice? Are there always tradeoffs or compromises involved? How do we balance our values within a budget
Porter: There are probably always going to be tradeoffs. Obviously, the more affluent you are the easier it is. But just because you have to operate within a budget doesn't mean you can't consciously make decisions about what you buy. You may have to make more compromises, but some of your decisions will adhere more closely to your values, which will be a contribution and source of satisfaction. The important thing is to avoid the perfectionist trap -- "If I can't do this perfectly, 100% of the time, why bother?" That kind of thinking is always the enemy of progress. If we applied that attitude to learning to walk, we would all still be crawling around on our hands and knees.
POV: The film "Maquilapolis" focuses on women in Tijuana who work in a factory that makes televisions, and it seems that electronics are a particularly troubling industry when it comes to making ethical consumer choices. Is there a way for consumers to have an impact in a situation where every choice is a difficult one, and there may not be an ideal ethical option
Porter: A lot of consumption decisions fall into this category. It is important to recognize that while there often aren't ideal ethical options, there are always choices to be made. The point is to make the best choice you can under a given set of circumstances. If all your choices are flawed and you are determined to buy a given type of product, then try and choose the product with the most sustainable design or the one made by a company whose overall practices are most congruent with your values.
Electronics is a good example. You can look at product design. Is the product Energy Star certified? Is the product design one that uses less material and/or less energy? Flat-screen computer monitors are a good example of this -- they use fewer materials and less energy. You can also look at the policies and practices of the companies manufacturing the product. Is the company transparent about its practices, policies and manufacturing locations? Are they taking steps to reduce their pollution and create more sustainable products? Are their labor practices sub-standard?
With electronics and other industries where most of the action is happening outside the U.S., I think we need to consider the impact of our trade policies. Both the environment and workers suffer when free trade is not fair trade. So it's important to let those who can influence these policies, our political representatives, know that environmental and labor standards have to go hand in hand with free trade.
POV: Besides making informed choices, how can consumers be active to encourage more responsible corporate behavior that is in line with their values
Porter: It is important to realize that your actions as a consumer are only part of the picture. There are a number of other things an individual can do to align their actions with their values and contribute to positive change.
- Support local communities and businesses. You can have a more pronounced impact locally, whether your focus is political, policy or economic. Increasingly towns and even states are seeking to regain some of the influence they once had over corporations, and this, by and large, is a good thing. Economically, a much higher percentage of the money you spend goes back into your local economy and local businesses are much more sensitive to the purchase decisions and opinions of local customers. You can often magnify the impact of your purchasing decisions by buying locally.
- Exert influence on the institutions you are involved with. We all work for, go to school at, receive services from or are members of organizations. By making your opinions known and engaging these institutions on certain issues, you can help stimulate these organizations to implement policies that can have a positive impact.
- Align your investments and your proxy votes with your values. The majority of Americans are now investors. Investors can choose not to invest in a company or to divest from a company they currently hold shares in. This activity is becoming more commonplace among both individual and institutional investors, as information about corporate practices becomes more readily available. Investors can also exert influence through their proxy votes. A growing number of proxy resolutions related to environmental and social issues are coming up at corporate annual meetings and some of these are gaining enough support to influence companies to change their practices.
- Promote campaign and lobbying reform. One of the most important tools in moving corporations toward more responsible behavior is regulation and legislation. Companies are naturally resistant to having their flexibility limited and, in our current system, can exercise enormous and undue influence on legislative and regulatory processes. We need to reduce that level of influence so government can more effectively serve the people. Supporting efforts at finance reform and pressing your representatives to act on these issues can have an impact. There is a growing momentum for reform and we all need to feed that fire.
People shouldn't get discouraged because they don't see changes happening overnight. You have to take a long view. When you step back and compare things twenty or thirty years ago with today, you can see that progress has been made. There are a lot more "sustainable" products on the market today than twenty years ago. Look at the organic industry. Look at recycling and the number of products produced from recycled materials. Look at hybrid and alternative cars. Look at the growing number of companies in the alternative energy industry, which is now in the top five as far as venture capital seeking to invest in that industry. The trends are positive, in part, because consumers are voting with their wallets and their actions, and companies, even industries are listening and responding.