Ethical Shopping Resources (pt. 1)
A few online sources to help you shop ethically. Part one of many to come.
Ethical shopping can be complicated, especially when there’s so much good information out there mixed with greenwashing and brands trying to cover their tracks & stay relevant by promoting “ethical” practices that don’t really cut it.
To me, ethical shopping means shopping from brands that are making a real effort at bettering how their production, marketing, selling, and other processes necessary to operate their company have an effect on people, animals, and planet. This can include everything from working with natural fabrics to providing repair services, ensuring living wages for each and every employee, having policies in effect to ensure no animals are harmed at any stage of production, and limiting pollution, for starters.
It’s a lot to think about for anyone, especially when you’re just starting to learn about the complications of fashion ethics, so today I’m going to share a couple of the resources I love to make navigating ethical shopping easier.
Good on You
Good on You is my go-to resource for clothes, shoes, and accessories. It’s both an app & website, so it’s easy to access wherever you are. I love having it downloaded on my phone, especially, because it’s super easy when I’m out shopping to just type in the name of the brand and see how it’s rated. Good on You rates brands in 5 categories, starting with “we avoid,” then up from there is “not good enough,” then “it’s a start,” “good,” and finally the top one is “great.”
Personally, I usually try to pick brands that are rated either “good” or “great,” but will shop from ones that are rated “it’s a start” if it’s an occasion where the item is something I really want or maybe it’s something I need very quickly and have limited local options. With these brands, I feel like they’re at least making an effort even if they aren’t perfect yet.
To establish which brand gets placed into which category, Good on You considers things like materials, labor conditions, animal welfare, and environmental impact over the entire product lifecycle.
Shoptiques
Shoptiques is a website that is connected to a bunch of small boutiques around the world. On this site, you can click on a category like dresses or sweaters, similar to other online retail sites, and everything that comes up will be from a small business owner.
This isn’t to say that like everything that comes up on Shoptiques is necessarily sustainable or eco-friendly or produced in an ethical way - many boutiques order from wholesale sites and might not be aware of the full supply chain, and often these products are made with unsustainable synthetics. However, I still like to use this resource because purchases directly support the small business the item comes from. You can also filter by location if there’s a specific city or country you want to shop from and support their local economy including places like Australia or California, Toronto, Hawaii, Berlin, and Mexico, among so many others.
Reminder - Just Do Your Best!
When you’re using these resources, it’s always important to remember to do the best you can when it comes to ethical shopping! I always aim to cultivate a space where people don’t feel like they have to be perfect - if you shop from mostly ethical brands but make one fast fashion purchase, it won’t be the end of the world. A lot of people making a majority of incredibly thoughtful, ethical decisions with a few not-so-ethical ones here and there will have a way bigger impact in the long run than just giving up because you can’t stick to the ideal of not making one mistake when it comes to ethical consumption!