We’ve rounded up 5 compelling reasons to be supporting ethical brands in today’s blog. A quote by Anne Lapel has been inspiring us lately: “Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.” – it certainly resonates with us, what about you?
What we do with our money is important. It’s a way to use our consumer power to influence change. Where we shop and what brands we support is a way for us to be an everyday activist. It’s how we can live our values and wear them too, a phrase Roberta Lee our founder has been using since 2016!
We hope you will choose to support our brands on Ethical Brand Directory where we’ve made it easy for you to shop your values and support the brands that care about the same issues that you do.
We were looking at some of Roberta’s content from 2016 and we found a great blog about why we should all be supporting the brands that care. We’ve borrowed some the best bits of her blog, including her 5 reasons for supporting ethical brands.
5 Reasons to support brands that care:
- When we support an ethical brand – the transaction may just be us giving them our money in exchange for a product or service, but that money is working hard behind the scenes to support the business run itself in a socially conscious way.
- Regardless of where we happen to have been born, or where we live or work, we are all human beings – ethical brands regard people (especially workers in poorer countries) as human beings who have rights, who deserve to be treated well and paid a fair working wage.
- As consumers and we have the power to put ethical brands on the map – the big brands will take notice of the little brands that are able to make a profit, without compromising on ethics or sustainability
- The children we see today, are the future. They deserve to live a healthy happy life – but there is no guarantee this will be possible if we continue to support brands that don’t care about the condition of our beautiful planet.
- We can sleep better at night knowing that we are active citizens that use our spending power to support positive change.
Roberta went on to say:
“Ignorance isn’t bliss – it’s Damaging”
“It wasn’t long ago that I walked around in ignorant bliss, out of sight out of mind and all of that malarky. But something happened to me – I started learning more about mass produced items that feed our desire for fast and cheap products. I started questioning things. I started to care about the impact of my actions and I realised I wasn’t alone.”
Even back in 2016 she was talking about the important role of consumers:
“There is a big shift happening in the consumer space – but it’s still not enough – as long as there is a demand for cheap stuff, their will always be a supply of cheap stuff coming from somewhere – whilst other people and the planet pays the price.” Our shopping creates demand. By supporting more ethical brands we can turn the tables.
Roberta has been promoting the good work of brands since 2016 – it’s great to see how one person’s passion can be contagious. Ethical Brand Directory wasn’t even born back in 2016 and she was already talking at events and encouraging us to make a change. We are now a team of 20+ all contributing and doing our bit to help inspire more people to join us on our mission to take ethical consumerism from a niche to the norm.
In her blog she encourages us all to:
“Be the Change You Wish To See In The World”
It’s interesting to read about Roberta’s vision before EBD and our team was even created. She clearly found her purpose – I think we can all learn a thing or two from her journey so far. Especially this statement:
“I realised (not too long ago) that I need to think bigger. I told myself that I will use my business as a vehicle to inspire positive change – I will talk at more events, I will do whatever I can to reach even more people. I want to help them understand the relationship between consumerism and our health, happiness, the economy, other people and the planet. We all deserve to look good, feel good, and live great – and we all need to buy stuff, there is no disputing that. But we can do good at the same time, simply by supporting brands that give a damn.”
You can read the rest of Roberta’s blog from back in 2016 here.
The EBD Team
You can find out more about our team and what we do here