Making the decision to go green i.e. purchase goods with the environment in mind, can be expensive. Typically, organic or 'green' services and products are more expensive than their conventional counterparts.
Why would something good for the planet cost more? Simply because of supply and demand, most experts agree. Green isn’t yet popular enough so production costs are high and making choices can be tough.
What’s a person with a conscience to do?
Enter Etheco. Ethical purchasing to help people make better choices for less. A UK based company that "takes the effort out of ethical living," Etheco aids consumers by ranking products for best combined environmental, human rights and social justice ratings.
The scoring scale of 100 combines the product or service’s environmental impact – including energy and resource efficiency – along with ethical performance resulting in a relative 'ethicalness' of a product.
So for example, a Hoover HNL6166 White Model scores 88% - the highest for any model on the Etheco site. The Hoover model gets an A+ energy rating, an A for washing efficiency rating, centrifugal rating of A and bonus points for being a front loader.
In modern terms, the Etheco rating system can be likened to a search engine for environmental efficiency.
The system is governed by an algorithm that looks at a comprehensive environmental dataset for each product and produces a % score against the product or service being checked.
The higher the score, the more ethical the product/service and the better the product/service is for the environment. Across all products and services, the team factors in data from Ethiscore, the UK’s leading provider of ethical information vis a vis companies, brands and products.
Says Etheco co-founder Jason Hollingsworth: "We’ve developed this tool to help combat the greenwash used by some companies to sell what amounts to nothing more than highly compromised and confusing products...We are all for an open source approach to ethical living and green energy in particular, the more informed the consumer is and the easier it is to make the right choice, and the more people who make that choice, the happier we are."
Listed on Etheco’s sparse, frill-free website are tips for practicing ethical buying including:
Positive buying or favoring ethical products derived from fair trade, organic or cruelty free environments. Negative buying means avoiding products or services of companies engaging in unethical practices i.e. those with poor human or animal rights records or environment polluters.
Company-based buying is targeting a particular business and all it's subsidiaries for boycott for poor ethical procedures. A Fully Screened Approach is a combination of all three ethical buying methods and involves examining the product and the company in an evaluation of its ethical value.
That’s a lot of evaluating and guideline to follow for the relatively small, Etheco team.
"There are only 4 of us," the companies 'About Us' website section reads. "We all have jobs and do other things, but we think this is really important. We’ve a wide variety of backgrounds, one was a manager at Price Waterhouse Coopers, another has a Masters in psychology and there’s an Environmental Consultant in the mix too."
"The reason we’re doing this is because we all believe that every little bit helps and that the more people we can help to do their bit, the better things will be. Etheco makes being a consumer a good choice rather than something you just do."
In addition to ratings on washing machines, the site offers a green calculator for punching figures on electricity and gas to show consumers how they can save money and reduce carbon footprints. There are also tips for switching to a greener home energy supplier.
In keeping with green home energy, Etheco teamed up with UK Power in recent months to pay UK consumers to go green. In exchange for switching to greener electricity suppliers, the collaborative will pay consumers the 11 pound commission ordinarily received by the company for brokering the deal.
"At Etheco, we really want to help you shop responsibly," comes the company claim. "If this means we have to pay everyone in Britain to switch, then we will."
The collaborative bid to get consumers to trade up greener home electricity tariffs is being described as an industry first.
"This is the result of 12 months’ research into the domestic power industry...the decision to waive the commission and pass it back to consumers was based upon a sense of priority.
It is more important to get people switching to more sustainable energy than it is to make a fast buck from people’s ignorance and be part of the general misinformation surrounding green energy," Hollingsworth said.
Visit www.etheco.com for more information.