According to a recent story from Racked, there are more consumers searching for socially responsible goods, more brands offering those goods, and more artisans making those goods, but shopping ethically is still as difficult as it ever was.
While the “highly charged political atmosphere” right now might, as one forecasting agency predicts, prompt consumers to “[give] their business to brands and retailers that share their values,” due to a wide-spread set of issues ranging from supply chain ambiguity to still-unfair wages to morally destitute third-party sellers, there’s “no 100 percent foolproof formula for getting it right.”
But that doesn’t mean “we should give up hope,” the incredibly well-researched story goes on to explain, because there’s also an encouragingly large number of organizations, brands, and communities that are working like hell to find that formula.
Project Just, for instance, is trying to alter shopping habits by “by providing impartial research on the impact and practices of different brands.” And Anou is doing great work as “an artisan-run community in Morocco whose artisans set their own prices, upload photos of their wares, and sell directly to customers across the world.”
These types of groups, the story says, are key to providing consumers with the information they need to actually become the conscious shoppers they hope to be, as well as to access the goods they purportedly want to buy.
You can read more about it at Racked.
