Wallet Mouth

Dirty pretty things

I’d heard of blood diamonds before, but I’d never given much thought to the ethics of the wider jewelry industry until the other day, when a friend told me about a local shop that’s working to further the cause of nonexploitative jewelry.

Lori Bonn Design, in Oakland, Calif., has spearheaded an effort to develop an industry-wide standard for ethically made jewelry called Clear Conscience. It’s a multiyear process involving lots of meetings at industry conferences, Lori Bonn co-owner Bill Gallagher told me, and it sounds like it may be a couple of years before anything final is hammered out. But it’s something to look forward to. “Consumers want to know that they didn’t harm the environment or people with this pretty thing they’re wearing,” Gallagher said.

What does that harm look like, and how does it take place? One biggie is the extraction of the metals used in jewelry. You can read all about the horrors of acid leaching, air pollution, and the exploitation of indigenous peoples associated with mining on the No Dirty Gold campaign’s  website. Another good source of information is Ethical Metalsmiths,  which works to stimulate demand for responsibly sourced materials.

Then there are the gemstones. The Kimberly Process was designed to address concerns about blood diamonds, but it doesn’t cover other gems. “We buy from apparently honest, ethical people, but there’s a whole progression of things before the stones get to the dealers that we don’t know about, and until there’s a standard, there’s no independent way to know,” Gallagher said. He added that “there are beginning to be sources of gemstones whose path can be verified,” such as Columbia Gem House, which Lori Bonn is starting to use as a source for its offerings.

Finally, there are  the working conditions of the actual jewelry makers to consider. Lori Bonn has its designs executed by facilities in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. Gallagher said that when checking out possible factories to work with, “we go there to see what it looks like and smells like, and we follow our gut. We know that our workers generally can afford an above-average standard of living, and their kids are in school.”

An argument can be made that having any jewelry made outside of the first world is necessarily exploitative. Gallagher counters that it’s not so simple. “If you just source from developed countries, you’re taking away the livelihood potential from poor countries that are deeply dependent on this work,” he said. Furthermore, he added, “there’s a level of craft, detail, and workmanship that’s not available on any kind of scale in the U.S. It’s inherent in other cultures, and I think it should be preserved.”

One thing is clear: momentum for responsible jewelry is building. Twenty-six companies, including Tiffany & Co. and Wal-Mart, have signed on to No Dirty Gold’s Golden Rules protocol. The Fair Trade Jewelry blog hums with news. And last year saw the creation of the Madison Dialogue, an initiative for businesses and interested parties to encourage verified sources of responsible metals and gems. Next month the Madison Dialogue will hold the Ethical Jewelry Summit in Washington, D.C. Perhaps the Clear Conscience program will gain some traction there.

It’s only a matter of time before ethical jewelry hits the mainstream. Already, retailers like Brilliant Earth are responding to demand for conflict-free diamonds and renewed metals. That’s great, but I look forward to the day when consumers can depend on a recognizable label or logo to assure us that, whether it’s a diamond engagement ring or a pair of casual earrings that we’re after, we can have a clear conscience about buying it.

WYSIWUG

I just came across a funny new word that sounds like it should describe something wookiees do behind closed doors but actually has a more useful meaning. Wugging, or web-use giving, lets you raise money for do-gooder groups by shopping online and using search engines—things you probably do anyway.

The great thing about wugging is that it costs you nothing. The money comes from affiliate marketing programs and search-engine advertisers. Alonovo, which I’ve blogged about before, is one example of a wugging site. Here are some more:

Everyclick is a U.K.-based search engine, powered by Ask.com, that gives 50 percent of its gross revenues to charity every month. You can pick a group to benefit from your searches from a list of 170,000 organizations. Everyclick says it has raised nearly $586,000 so far.

Here in the U.S., GoodSearch follows essentially the same model. It’s powered by Yahoo, and it has 44,207 participating nonprofits and schools. GoodSearch offers more than just search, however. This year it added a shopping component that lets you raise money for your favorite group by buying from online retailers such as iTunes, Macy’s, Travelocity, and Walmart.

For more wugging fun, check out FreePledge, where you can shop from 189 merchants and choose a beneficiary from among 259 nonprofits, and Schoolpop, which lets you pay down tuition and student loans and raise money for your favorite school. (Schoolpop, it should be noted, is not exclusively web-based; users can also participate in stores and via its branded credit card.)

The wonderful world of wugging is not without its downsides. For one thing, e-commerce wugging sites (as opposed to search engines) give people an incentive to buy from large corporations whose values may not be in line with their own. Then there’s the issue of the energy consumed by shipping all those products. If you’re buying something that you could have found at a local shop, the good that comes from your wugging donation could be outweighed by the benefits of keeping your money in your community.

Still, if you’re going to be shopping and searching online (and who among us isn’t, really?), why not put those keystrokes to good use?

SEC attempting to rein in shareholder activism

Most of the time when I talk about how consumers interact with companies, I do so in terms of boycotts and buycotts. But lately I’ve been thinking about a related topic: the attempt to make businesses behave better by changing them from within via shareholder activism.

I meant to blog last month about this excellent story in the New York Times Magazine that profiles a nun’s decade-long effort to challenge ExxonMobil on global warming by submitting resolutions at annual shareholder meetings. But I guess I got sidetracked.

Now the subject has taken on new importance, because the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing rules that would make it harder for individual shareholders like Sister Patricia Daly to file resolutions—and make it easier for companies to get rid of such resolutions.

Why should we care? Well, for one thing, because companies are owned by shareholders. Shouldn’t boards of directors be obligated to listen to the concerns of their owners? And it really is just listening—these proxy resolutions are merely advisory. That doesn’t mean they’re not important, however. Resolutions are a crucial means for bottom-up communication with companies about the pressing social and environmental issues of our day. They represent one small way for individuals to remind businesses that it’s possible to both make a profit and behave responsibly.

The SEC is still taking comments on this deplorable idea, but only through Sept. 28. Follow this Co-op America link, and try to talk some sense into SEC chairman Christopher Cox.

Amuse-bouche: My fantasy label

How long before something like this comes to pass? Link.

Another score for fair trade

I learned about Fair Trade Sports, Inc. the other day, when founder Scott James commented on my previous post, and it’s so cool I just have to blog about it. Who knew there was such a thing as a fair-trade pigskin? I certainly didn’t, until now.

James’s company, which was started about a year ago, is the first in the U.S. to sell fair-trade sports balls—for football, futsal (indoor soccer), rugby, soccer, and volleyball—as well as sweatshop-free sports apparel. And if that weren’t enough, it donates all after-tax profits to domestic and international children’s charities.

It’s worth checking out the site, which contains lots of interesting articles and links. I particularly liked the explanation of where FTS balls are made and by whom.

Fair-trade e-commerce is about to get interesting

When I first learned about World of Good, I was pretty excited about it. Unlike other web retailers of housewares, accessories, and gifts, it peddles only fair-trade, sustainably made products. It also actively supports worldwide community-development projects through its nonprofit arm.

Granted, World of Good’s selection is somewhat limited, but that’s because of the stringent process it follows to choose its vendors, most of whom are small groups of artisans. All are affiliated with social and economic development programs, and each product is screened in regards to its environmental footprint, production process, and community benefit.

All very cool.

But what got me really excited was talking with World of Good’s global marketing associate Matt Levinthal about an upcoming project: a joint effort by World of Good and eBay to create a large online marketplace for ethically made artisanal products. The platform itself doesn’t have a name yet, but the initiative to develop it is called Project Good. The goal is to launch before the holidays.

Levinthal says the site will feature multiple sellers (including World of Good), thousands of products, and, most important, about 25 different “trust providers”—independent, mission-driven verifying organizations with clear sets of standards—to give users the type of information that is so sorely lacking in most shopping environments: details on sustainability, labor conditions, etc.

“People really want to make good choices, but it’s just not easy for them to do it,” Levinthal says.

Don’t expect to be able to buy any type of product on the site. It’ll be a source for things like handmade jewelry, apparel, home furnishings, and chocolate, not DVDs and lawn mowers.

But the important thing about this project is that it will advance the notion of social responsibility as an in-demand product attribute—as well as the idea that we consumers have a right to know what goes into the making of all the stuff we buy. If this initiative takes off, there will be a demand for similar enterprises that cover even more product categories. (The closest thing I can think of that currently exists is Alonovo, which I’ve blogged about before, but for it to reach the next level, it needs to provide ratings for far more goods than it is currently able to.)

 “Access to information enables consumers to make good choices,” Levinthal says. “Companies will have to follow. That whole idea of a third-party verifier, trade organization, or some other body that provides approval will become the only thing that people trust, and will become the norm, we believe.”

Stop paying for junk mail

Don’t you hate it when you buy one thing from a company, once, and are subsequently doomed to forever receive its catalog?

For Christmas one year, Mr. Wallet Mouth gave me a sweater from web retailer Athleta; now our mailbox gets a steady stream of women’s clothing catalogs—in his name.

I’ve been fed up with junk mail for a while, and my feeble attempts at opting out haven’t yielded great results (of course, it doesn’t help that I haven’t repeated those efforts since we moved a couple years ago). So I was happy to learn about this month’s Junk Your Junk Mail campaign from Carbon Conscious Consumer (or C3), a project of the Center for a New American Dream.

I used C3’s free web form to generate a bunch of opt-out letters and took the pledge saying I did. I encourage you to do the same. Also be sure to check out the link to petition lawmakers to create a national Do-Not-Junk registry, essentially a Do-Not-Call list for your mailbox.

If all those opt-out letters don’t do the trick, I might pony up the $41 to have 41pounds.org work its anti-junk-mail magic, which it says will get rid of 90 percent of unwanted mail for five years.

Pondering Anita Roddick’s legacy

I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything from the Body Shop. In fact, I remember being turned off by the overpowering fog of fragrance that emanated from the first location of the store that I noticed.

But I recall being impressed by reports I’d hear over the years about the environmental and social consciousness of Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick, who died yesterday after suffering a brain hemorrhage, and how she sought to have the company reflect and embody her ideals. (Roddick championed rainforests, opposed animal testing, crusaded for the rights of indigenous peoples and initiated trade agreements with them ... the list goes on.)

The company has also seen its share of denouncements, with critics arguing that it has not lived up to its stated ethics (one such critic, Jon Entine, has published a number of articles on the subject).

Last year, the Body Shop’s sale to cosmetics powerhouse L’Oréal—which uses animal testing and one-quarter of which is owned by corporate persona non grata Nestlé—heralded a drop in popularity for the company and prompted boycott calls. Ethiscore gives the Body Shop a “very poor” rating of 4.5 out of 20, citing the retailer’s “profiteering from pollution” and its use of potentially harmful chemicals and ingredients tested on animals.

Still, reading Roddick’s obits today, I couldn’t help but feel inspired by her life and work. She was clearly a passionate woman who genuinely cared about the causes she publicized; she was blogging about one of those causes, the situation of the American prisoners known as the Angola Three, on her site as recently as five days ago.

Whether or not the Body Shop ultimately betrayed its ideals, Dame Anita Roddick was a pioneer who succeeded in getting the notion that businesses can be ethical as well as profitable on much of the world’s radar. She helped create the conditions and momentum for much of the fine work being done today in the realm of responsible consumerism. And for that, I am thankful.

Amuse-bouche: The changing face of the buy-American movement

“Made in the U.S.A” labels aren’t just for rust-belters anymore. Link.