Our Five Favourite Ethical Brands

Source: MuMu organic

  1. Patagonia A firm favourite with outdoor types, Patagonia also wins the hearts and minds of non-outdoorsy environmentalists.  With campaigns like Don’t Buy This Jacket and a commitment to repair clothing though the Common Threads Initiative, this company leads the field in sustainable business.  Patagonia is still privately-owned by Yvon Chouinard whose book ‘Let My People Go Surfing’ we mentioned in our ‘Five Inspiring Sustainability Reads’ post.  Yvon is co-founder of 1% for the Planet, which Sustainability Consult is a proud member of.  And Kathryn certainly wouldn’t set foot on the mountain without her Patagonia Backcountry Guide Pants.

  2.  Oxfam A brand, you say?  Surely Oxfam is a development NGO not a retail brand?  And yet in some countries, for example the UK where Oxfam was set up in 1942 as the Oxfam Committee for Famine Relief, Oxfam has built up its retail operations and has not just second-hand clothing and bookshops but their own brand of fairtrade and ethical products.  You can even ‘buy’ a goat, a chicken, clean water or renewable energy through the amazing Oxfam Unwrapped products.  In Belgium, Oxfam organises fairtrade breakfasts (check out our photos from 2011 and 2012) and promotes both local agriculture and fairtrade.  They also have a policy division who we’ve worked with in the past.

3.    MuMu organic MuMu organic is an up and coming ethical fashion company from Greece who we have been helping on their start-up path.  Truly breathtaking designs with natural and fairtrade fabrics, MuMu organic is one to watch.

4.    Ecover Belgian natural cleaning products company, Ecover, is the cleaning product of choice for the Sustainability Consult office where we can’t resist taglines like ‘Feel Good Cleaning’.  Our favourite products are the floor soap with linseed oil, the lavender handwash and the loo cleaner.  They all smell good enough to eat, not that we recommend it, and they come in large refill sizes. We’re waiting to see what their ‘Small Steps’ environmental campaign will look like.

5.   Triodos  Rethinking banking, Triodos invests ethically and offers a full range of banking services.  They have a great one-minute video on how they do things differently.  You can also see where they will invest your hard-earned cash.  With banking services in a number of countries, now ethical banking is within reach.