Not a poll

[radegund]

Well, I'm back, and slowly catching up (on all fronts). There's been a lot happening in my online world since last I wandered through. Those of you who've been going through hard times recently, I'm thinking of you. Those whose lives are going well, I'm very happy for you.

A passing question on glitzfrau's journal a few days ago caught my mind. "What do you boycott?" she asked her flatmate. So now I want to know too. An LJ poll would be an annoying string of text boxes, so I'm just asking questions. Answer in a comment, if you're so inclined (I've given some of my answers after each question).

Consumer ethics
[Let "ethics" mean whatever you mean by it; I think of it mainly in ecological and political terms.]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?
Nestle. Nike. Coke. Sad-hen eggs.* Flesh. Produce from Israel (except that a couple of times a year I get the stuff home and realise that I didn't check, in which case I eat it). Tobacco. Fast food.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?
Free-range eggs if there are no organic ones and I really want an omelette. Non-eco-friendly cleaning/washing products (household and personal) if I'm on holiday and the local shops don't stock the good stuff; otherwise it can wait until I get into town. Non-biodegradable rubbish bags.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?
Brands from which Nestle benefits (e.g. Buitoni, Perrier, San Pellegrino). Barry's or Lyon's tea (by negotiation with niallm, we alternate these with fair-trade tea). Organic produce in supermarkets, where they generally package the bejaysus out of it so that you know you're getting the premium article. Non-organic produce in supermarkets (but in the case of bananas I choose fair-trade over organic).

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower?
Non-fair-trade chocolate (I'm getting there, but hot chocolate in restaurants is my downfall). Standard-issue menstrual blood-soakers** - I hope to try the DivaCup soon, and if I don't like it, to switch to eco-friendly tampons and pads. Plane tickets from non-unionised airlines. Clothes containing fibres derived from petroleum.

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?
I drive a car (and feel faintly smug that we've put less than half the average annual mileage on the clock since we've owned it). I fly. I use biodegradable disposable nappies rather than cloth ones, and at the moment I send them to landfill rather than investigating the feasibility of using a wormery to process them (I know they'd completely clog up the compost bin). I use kitchen-roll (but I compost most of it). I eat bananas, drink berry smoothies in winter and otherwise violate the principle of consuming local produce in season. I am very ill-informed about all but the most high-profile issues in ethical consumption.

OK, your turn!

* By "sad-hen" I mean "not free-range or organic" ... um, in case that's not clear.
** The phrase sanitary protection has always seemed to me to carry the vague implication that periods are (a) dirty and (b) perilous. Sod that.

Comments

[kulfuldi.livejournal.com]

I'm not a v political consumer - though I try to avoid Nestle, McDonalds and stuff from Israel. I do try to seek out products produced or grown in the third world, though, especially anything from Ethiopia. It may be eco-unfriendly when you're in Ireland, but the lack of industry or trade here would make you want to weep, and people need do something that will get them away from so-called subsistence farming - which is nothing of the sort, if millions of people can't actually subsist on what they grow on their land. The terrible thing is, even in shops in Ethiopia it's hard to find anything other than fresh produce and coffee which is local - there's so little industry here, even food processing, that pretty much everything is imported.