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

[steeraway.livejournal.com]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?
- Meat, fish, non-organic/non-free-range eggs.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?
- I'll drink tea in cafes etc even if it's not Fair Trade.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?
- Nestle products (kidpower...or do I mean advertising power?)

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower?
- Non-organic fruit/veg/chocolate.

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?
- I used disposable nappies for my kids. I shop in Tesco. I do have a habit of 'looking the other way' when it suits me to do so :-/

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?
nestle, nike (although, boycotting them isn't hard. but remember kids, that includes converse!), coca-cola, proctor & gamble, plane tickets from ryanair, eggs from caged hens, domino's pizza, anything from a shell station.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?
bread, margarine & other such staples from companies i haven't really bothered to check out. loo roll that isn't recycled, organic, or whatever.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?
stuff from supermarkets.

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower?
see 2 & 3, above. also, maybe one day i'll quit eating seafood.

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?
i haven't even begun to think about food miles or whatnot. neither have i begun to think about the evils of supermarkets, be they individual supermarkets, or just supermarkets in general. this is simply because it is more convenient for me to claim ignorance.
also, i am addicted to fruit teas by twining's and don't know how i would live without them, but they're not supremely ethical.
also, if eating out, i will take the liberty of just assuming that the cheese is vegetarian.

[jeejeen.livejournal.com]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?
McDonalds. And plenty of other things, by default. Like no fast food, no Nike (but mostly because i just hate NIKE). DEFINITELY no sad eggs, and no beef, chicken, pork etc etc. Have stopped buying seafood at home, but still am horrible traitor and eat it out.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?
Hmmm... cheese, I guess, though a lot of the cheese I buy is locally produced and/or organically/specially made somewhere else, so it's all right, really. Non fair-trade coffee sometimes, when I'm out, though it's always FT at home.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?
Starbucks, yup. Chips from big giant companies (Ruffles, Lays, Miss Vickie's etc.), anything from big giant companies.

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower?
Anything from Starbucks, ever. Which will be easy enough once I'm not working at the crack of dawn across from a Starbucks. Aaargh. Um, probably I'd like to stop buying any veggies that aren't organic, but that's a bit in the distance on account of the cash monay.

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?
I am choosing not to fight ALL of the giant companies but am slowly starting to limit myself to fresh/local/small company/community packaged/bulk stuff. I still buy plenty of things that are corporately produced, and I don't know when I'll get around to stopping that.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?
Nestle, and all of the assorted brandnames Nestle has bought that I can keep in mind. Battery or barn eggs.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?
Non-free range eggs in restaurants. Non-fair trade coffee/chocolate in restaurants.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?
Non fair-trade coffee or chocolate. Walkers crisps. (They support George W. Bush.) Non-vegetarian cheese and wine. Fresh produce from supermarkets.

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower/can afford it?

Cow's milk and cheese. Organic fruit/vegetables. (The latter falls into the "can't afford it" category: I buy what I can, when I can, but, well, I can't.) Bananas from South America "dollar plantations". (The latter is partly inconvenience: bananas from the Windward Isles are getting increasingly harder to find.)

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?

I eat a lot of imported food - beans, spices, fruit. I would in theory like to do more about supporting small cooperatives, and not supporting evil governments. But the best I can do is to buy fair trade coffee and tea, and try to buy fruit and veg from small shops not supermarkets.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?

Nestle, Nike, eggs from battery hens, coke, Disney, the Gap. Um, those are my only absolute boycotts I can think of, though some of them are easy as I'd never want that stuff anyway.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?

Not really products, but patronising chain stores - I'd far rather patronise independent shops, but will buy from Waterstones or HMV if it's convenient. Also, supermarkets.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?

Occasionally I slip up and forget what's owned by Nestle or coke. Proctor and Gamble stuff, purely because I don't know. I shop at Asda. Domino's pizza.

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower?

I am slowly moving towards buying more and more organic and locally sourced food, and avoiding large companies in general. I will also probably go largely vegetarian again once I'm not living with Mark any more.

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?

The one things I can never, ever see myself giving up is air travel. I feel horribly guilty about it, as of all the single things I could cut out it would probably make the biggest impact. But it would DRAMATICALLY lower my quality of life, and I'm not prepared to make that sacrifice.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Addendum to 1: also fast food.

[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.

Re: Not a poll

[ailbhe]

I don't really think in terms of Not Buying, usually - because buying is the active thing, and by buying something on the Good list, I just lose the need to buy something on the Bad list, most of the time.

I actively seek to avoid Nestle, Coke, McDonalds, Nike, Gap, Disney, Made In China (except Ikea, who have a no-child-labour, no-slave-labour policy and I am not investigating it to see if it's true). I happen not to buy much from the big pharmaceuticals, but that's not really deliberate. And I can't imagine buying battery eggs.

I don't buy anything reluctantly, except possibly drinks while travelling - sometimes the only drinking water is Nestle or Coke owned. Um, and I hate buying supermarket organic produce, but that's because my local supplier has better food as much as anything.

What do you buy from time to time, guiltily? Um. Non-fair-trade tea, I think. And chocolate. It's hard to find sweet, light, dairy and soya free fair trade chocolate. Ah - and clothes. Cotton, dammit. Cotton. And disposable nappies - even the biodegradable ones don't really biodegrade unless you do something active with them. At least I never landfill them in a plastic nappy sack. We do mostly use cloth, though, which is even easier than disposables for us, because we would have real trouble bringing a week's worth of disposables home, since we have no car.

I hope eventually to stop buying from supermarkets, and to stop buying disposables. We're also working on cutting flying out of our lives - we're going to train and ferry to Ireland this summer.

I'm not fighting the menstrual products issue right now. I have a mooncup, I can't use it. I do refuse to buy scented anything like that though.

Um, and we don't have a car, and we only use recycled loo roll and kitchen roll.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?
Nestle, Coke, anything factory-farmed, fruit/veg from far away, ready meals, disposable nappies. Meat, I suppose, but that's not quite why I'm vegetarian.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?
Like jinxremoving, sometimes things in supermarkets.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?
Non-fair-trade chocolate. Pepsi.

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower?
Throwaway things for the baby - cotton wool, baby wipes and that sort of thing. Non-ethical clothes. I'd like to stop shopping in supermarkets and big international chain stores altogether, and I'd like to start marking clothes more, on the same principle as making food from ingredients. And I'd like to stop buying things with excessive packaging.

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?
I'm not very dogmatic about animal products in additives and so on. I own a pair of Nike running shoes (no other ones would fit me).

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Oh, the kidpower thing I am not looking forward to! People ask me quite often if I'm going to raise Oisín as a vegetarian (yes, I know, they wouldn't ask a meat-eating parent the corresponding question - yargh). My standard answer is that I won't cook him meat, but if he goes to a children's party and wants a cocktail sausage I'm not going to make a fuss. But there are so many grey areas. For instance, he's nearly at the age when the creche would start feeding him meat, and I find I'm totally not OK with that. Particularly since they use ordinary supermarket meat, which is what made me go veggie in the first place. The creche director tells me that when he's about eighteen months old I may find that he's very unhappy with being the odd one out at meal times. So I'll have to confront the issue one way or another...

I've chosen to see "looking the other way" as "picking my battles". Also, it's an ongoing project. My ban on non-fair-trade chocolate is fairly recent, for instance. To divest oneself entirely of the unethical aspects of modern consumer society would require an effort I'm simply not prepared to put in at the moment, and I'm more or less OK with that ... most of the time.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

1. We live about fifty feet from a Shell station. It's bloody hard not to succumb...

5a. Hell! What's wrong with Twinings?

5b. Yes, I also operate a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in restaurants: if the ingredients listed are veggie, I'll go with it.

[jinxremoving.livejournal.com]

twinings is owned by wittington investments who get a negative rating for animal testing, factory farming and "other animal rights". i don't know the details. of course, i'm sipping their new cherry & cinnamon tea right now, and it's delish.

i thought of a bunch more things i Just Don't Do: walkers crisps, amazon (the sole exception being a yearly wishlist purchase for the bloke who hosts my website), starbucks, fast food chains ...

Don't we consume more or less the same things?

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

1. What do you absolutely avoid buying (brands, categories of product, etc.)?

Sad-hen eggs. Flesh. Produce from Israel. Tobacco. Fast food. Products with airmiles, especially vegetables and damn Chilean wine. Meat. Petrol. Stuff from Aldi and Lidl.

2. What do you buy reluctantly if a more ethical alternative would be inconvenient to find or wait for?

Non-fair-trade coffee. I NEED my caffeine more than those damn Columbians need their rights! And things in supermarkets.

3. What do you buy from time to time, guiltily?

Stuff with too much packaging. Non-fair-traded goods. Vegetables from the supermarket. Cheap clothes. Actually, cheap stuff in general, because I'm broke.

4. What do you aspire to avoid buying if/when you muster the willpower?

Non-organic beauty products. I am never sure about leather, because I hate the thought of petrochemical shoes, but at the same time I don't think most shoe leather is actually a beef by-product at all.

5. What battles in this arena do you choose not to fight for the moment?

Stuff that requires large expenditure.