Wallet Mouth

Where to buy ethical office supplies?

Today’s OfficeMax action was great fun, a spirited but peaceful protest with a healthy turnout of about 35 activists. I got to don a pair of fuzzy antlers and talk to several customers who appreciated learning that much of the paper sold by the office-supply giant harms indigenous people and old-growth boreal forests in Canada.

But after writing yesterday’s post plugging the protest, I realized that I had a problem: I’m running out of paper and envelopes for my home office, and I don’t know where to replenish them.

I used to go to Office Depot, because you could get a free ream of recycled paper (though it turns out it was only 30 percent recycled) in exchange for turning in a used printer cartridge for recycling. That served me well for a long time, but the deal is no longer offered; now you just get a discount.

What to do?

According to this “report card” published by Forest Ethics and Dogwood Alliance last year, the best option is Staples. It earned a B (beating Office Depot’s C+ and OfficeMax’s D) for offering paper products with an average of 30 percent post-consumer recycled content and for committing to have the majority of its paper products be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) by 2010.

Again, though, only 30 percent recycled content? Surely we can do better than that.

Also, I’d rather avoid big-box stores. But independent office-supply shops are few and far between. San Francisco has one that I know of—family-owned Patrick & Company—but the hours are limited, and the best it offers on the recycled-paper front is... you guessed it, 30 percent.

One of my fellow protesters mentioned New Leaf Paper, an environmentally friendly brand that can be found at Office Depot and FedEx/Kinko’s.

And after poking around online for a while, I found what looks to be a great resource: online retailer the Green Office (which happens to be located in San Francisco). It sells several kinds of 100 percent post-consumer recycled content paper, plus all sorts of other business products (including toner, fax machines, and janitorial and break-room supplies). The company even offers sustainability consulting services.

Especially cool is its system of logos that give shoppers quick visual cues about different sustainability aspects for each product. For example, a cheerful icon featuring a yellow badge tells me that this Strathmore stationery has three third-party certifications behind it: the FSC, Green Seal, and the EPA’s procurement guidelines (the latter isn’t actually a certification system, but I get where Green Office is coming from). 

Problem solved!

Amuse-bouche: consumers getting hip to sustainability

As if in response to my New Year’s rumination about a tipping point in consumer attitudes on values and spending, SustainableBusiness.com just published a piece about a recent study indicating that conscious consumerism is catching on.

Looking a gift horse in the (wallet) mouth

In thinking about all of last week’s Christmas presents, I realized that most of them probably wouldn’t qualify as being up to snuff when it comes to ethical consumerism. Many were no doubt manufactured in countries with subpar labor standards, or were purchased at big-box retailers or huge department stores that don’t give back to their local communities, or are not organic or fair trade, etc.

This points to the fact that when it comes to many types of popular gift items, ethical concerns are just not on many people’s radar—even people who share the values espoused on this blog.

I think that’s because it takes a long time for humans to internalize such issues. Time, and repeated exposure to succinct messages. Remember the “Give a Hoot! Don't Pollute” campaign?

Interestingly, that internalization process has happened in a big way with one large product category: food. But think about it. We’ve had years of exposure to various food labels. In the U.S., the law mandating the Nutrition Facts chart was passed in 1990. A variety of certification logos—mostly for organics but also for standards like Dolphin Safe—have been stamped onto edible products for years and are now ubiquitous. Then there are farmers’ markets and restaurant trends emphasizing seasonal ingredients and sustainable practices. 

Of course, one reason for the widespread lack of consideration of the responsibility (or irresponsibility) of non-food products is the fact that third-party certifications simply don’t exist for most of those items like they do for comestibles. That said, there are still plenty ways to align your ethics with your purchasing, many of which I’ve discussed on this site (check out the “Shopping with a Conscience” category, or the research resources on my Tools for Consumers list). But they’re not all available to everyone, and they’re not mainstream. Yet.

Call it new year’s optimism, but I have a feeling that consciousness around these issues isn’t going to take as long to penetrate consensus reality as the environmentally friendly food movement did. In fact, I think the momentum created by that movement has produced the conditions for a tipping point in consumer attitudes about all the other stuff we buy. Time will tell...

Charity and consumerism can make poor bedfellows

On Mr. Wallet Mouth’s website, which is dedicated to field recording and phonography, he notes that he donates the proceeds of some of his CDs to charity. Because I’m married to him, I know that he does in fact make these donations (to a variety of do-gooder groups, including Doctors Without Borders and Heifer International).

But say the catalog you’re using to do some Christmas shopping states that when you purchase its wares, you’ll also be making a charitable donation. How do you know the company is going to follow through on that promise? Same thing when you’re at the grocery store and the cashier asks if you’d like to tack on another dollar or two to go to a good cause—how do you know that’s actually going to happen?

According to a story in today’s New York Times, you don’t. Embedded giving, as this merging of buying and donating is termed, is completely unregulated (despite the existence of charity regulators) and therefore susceptible to all the flaws and scams that can result from an absence of accountability. For example, the World Wildlife Fund didn’t even know it was the supposed recipient of donations from products listed in Barneys New York’s “Have a Green Holiday” catalog until it was contacted by the New York Times reporter.

So are all embedded-giving programs merely vehicles for virtue-washing, so to speak?

Not necessarily. My iPod Nano bears the the logo of (Product)RED, which generates donations to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The article points out that this program is unusual in the embedded-giving world, because “a detailed contract exists between the seven companies that have signed contracts to use the (Product)RED brand” and because buyers can track how much money is being raised on the organization’s website.

But setting aside for a moment the issue of accountability, as well as the concern (also raised in the story) that fusing shopping and giving could make people less likely to give large donations at the end of the year, I see another problem: Embedded giving takes the focus away from the item being purchased and its “shadow” or backstory (the social and environmental factors behind its production—the stuff the label doesn’t tell you).

For example, Apple, the maker of my iPod, has a checkered history regarding e-waste and toxics. (Only recently has it been getting its act together.) And while I can’t find fault with the fact that that $10 of its $199 price tag is helping to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria, I also can’t help but believe that the RED donation serves as a distraction from what we consumers should really be thinking about before we buy: whether the product exploited people or the earth, and whether the maker of that product deserves our money.

Fair-labor assurances boost sales in retail experiment

A recent article in Slate discusses an intriguing experiment that suggests businesses can increase profits by offering products labeled as having been produced in a socially conscious manner.

More testing is needed, since the trial took place in a New York City store with a progressive reputation and customers who tend to be wealthier than average. But the proposition that there is a quantifiable unmet consumer demand for fairly made products is exciting.

My minor but nagging question—were the items the researchers labeled as fair-labor in the experiment actually produced under fair and safe conditions?—gets an affirmative answer in the research paper itself (pdf). Also notable there is the list of retailers that declined to participate in the experiment for fear of drawing attention to the issue of labor standards: Abercrombie and Fitch, Adidas, American Eagle, Eastern Mountain Sports, Free People, Gap, the Harvard / MIT Coop, J. Crew, Marshall’s, Nike, Patagonia, Target, Timberland, Urban Outfitters, and Wal-Mart.

Rovr wugs the dog

In my recent post on wugging, I neglected to bring up one weakness shared by all the e-commerce sites I mentioned: they require you to go to them.

That may sound obvious and trivial, but the fact is, Alonovo, FreePledge, and GoodSearch Shopping don’t have the name recognition of Amazon or Buy.com. It can be hard to train yourself to start using them and even harder to persuade others to do so. Habits are hard to break.

Rovr solves that problem. It’s a Firefox add-on that takes advantage of the same referral-based affiliate marketing programs as the other sites while somehow sidestepping the whole referral part.

Rovr recognizes when you’re on a participating e-commerce site—such as 1-800-flowers.com, CompUSA, and Gaiam—and sees to it that the referral commission, usually 4 to 10 percent of the revenue associated with any given purchase, goes to your chosen beneficiary (there are currently 27 nonprofits to pick from) without your ever having to visit another site.

It’s as if you’d been on Rainforest Action Network’s website and found a link that said, “Need to do some shopping? Click here to go to Amazon, and we’ll receive the referral commission from your purchase.” The effect is the same as if you’d clicked the link and bought something, but the beauty is that you don’t need to visit the nonprofit’s site (Rainforest Action doesn’t even have such a link); you merely need to designate the group as your Rovr beneficiary.

I asked Brad de Graf, who created Rovr, what’s in it for the retailers. I mean, doesn’t Rovr make it a little too easy for consumers to get them to make all these costly donations? “Ultimately, loyalty is why the merchants will accept it,” he replied. “If I as a consumer opt for Rovr merchants over non-Rovr ones, they’ll want to be one of the former.”

He also told me that Amazon’s program was originally intended only for first-time referrals, “but they evolve to meet changing landscapes.” And it seems that affiliate marketing programs have been around for long enough (about 13 years) to become embedded in the online retail landscape, which makes companies comfortable with a shortcut like Rovr.

Whatever the conditions that let Rovr exist, it’s a pretty cool tool. I also like Rovr’s ethos, reflected in its tagline—“Buy less, buy local. But online, make every purchase count.” That figures, since it’s a project of the citizen-consumer gurus at Seattle nonprofit Interra, which I’ve blogged about before.

The only downside to Rovr I can find is that it only works on computers where it’s installed. So if you have to shop on a machine where you can’t download a Firefox add-on, I suggest using one of the wugging sites mentioned at the beginning of this post. Personally, I’m partial to Alonovo because of the social-responsibility ratings of vendors that it provides. (Hmm, wouldn’t it be cool if Rovr could do that too?)

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?

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.”

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.