Unethical consumerism

[Gilly]

Has anyone else had enough of the mass produced and in many cases unethical rubbish that's out there for us to buy at the moment. I feel sad when people talk about these small individual shops that are having to close, I'm sure these shopkeepers have put a lot more time and effort into sourcing something more interesting than going for the mass produced stuff from the East. Fab if it's fair trade, but I have my doubts, I went into a new shop on Lordship Lane on Saturday and saw an unknown Italian label, I looked at the washing instructions and found it was made in China, is this because we should expect to pay more for an Italian label?

gilly

[RosieH]

Gilly, do you own an independent shop / make fairly traded stuff? just asking...

sad fact is most of us (even in organic east dulwich) are only fairweather fairtraders at the best of times - we buy ethically when we can, but when all that's open is Tesco, we'll sacrifice our scruples and pop in to give The Man our money for a box of tetleys

and not that many people give enough of a stuff - they'd like to if they didn't have to pay more for it. which is why the good news is that the high street has cottoned on to the fact and as a consequence there's more ethically traded stuff out there. I think that's a good thing. I don't need all my things to be knitted from hemp (on that score, the ethical clothing stall in the Warehouse has beautiful things, and not woven from hemp)

the more we stop seeing ethical as the preserve of the hemp-people, the more the big companies will get involved, and the better that will be for everyone the world over