“Organic or fairtrade? Sustainable or certified? With so many labels on food, clothes and white goods, it’s a miracle that we make it to the checkout before closing time. So just how useful are ethical labels to the average shopper – and which ones live up to their eco credentials?”
Archive for the ‘consumers’ Category
Food Labels and Their Meaning …
Monday, February 18th, 2008German Railway’s Environmental Mobility Check
Tuesday, December 18th, 2007The German railway operator “Deutsche Bahn” offers an “Environmental Mobility Check” during the booking procedure. You can compare your train journey with other options such as car or plane. They show several charts and tables comparing for example energy consumption, carbon dioxides or sulfur dioxides. Have a look at the screenshot for a travel from Hamburg to Munich.
Stuff-O-Meter
Friday, November 2nd, 2007Most of us are aware of the waste we produce, and the fact that we are operating in a culture where we are encouraged to throw things away and replace them with new rather than fix them. Just as we can cut down on household waste once we have information on recycling, or cut our energy use once we are made aware of how to do so, so we can limit the environmental impact of the goods we buy when we have clear information about their history.
Design students were asked to look at any common household durable product and design a visual representation of its lifetime use of material resources from ‘cradle to grave’. The information had to be presented in a form that a consumer would use, such as an information leaflet, a website page, or a display on a mobile phone, in a compelling way. It’s aimed at enabling consumers to make an informed choice about their goods before they buy, or to inform retailers about a product’s environmental credentials before they order from their suppliers.
Fair Trade now on e-bay
Friday, September 21st, 2007 |
E-bay launched a portal dedicated to fair trade that allows shoppers to easily find Fair Trade certified goods on the site.
It works because the seller has already paid a fair price for the goods so, although it’s perhaps not quite as cheap as broader eBay stuff, you can still get a bargain.
The interface is flash-based and easy to use, you can search by 4 main categories (Clothing & Accessories, Jewellery, Home & Garden and All Categories) and find information in the Fair Trade sellers listed on the portal. The intention is that each region highlights a Fair Trade artisan cooperative with its story and photographs, but unfortunately the sections about fair trade sellers and fair trade itself are not working at the moment.
More details here.
