Ethical Consumption

Almost everyone wants to think of themselves as a good person. Almost everyone knows that the world we live in is full of not-so-good things. A constant dilemma in our daily lives is navigating a world we understand as ethically imperfect while ourselves striving for internally-defined moral perfection.

One key area where this struggle comes up is navigating capitalism. For more than a century, the capitalistic free market, comprising the exchange of goods and services for currency, has dominated more and more of the globe as a means of survival.

We currently live in a globalized world where the system of capitalism spans borders and governments. If you live in a modern Canadian city or town, it is nearly impossible to extricate yourself from the global supply chain. From the food we buy, to the clothes we wear, to our electronic devices—most of the goods we consume were probably produced thousands of miles away. Your job, whether salaried or wage-based, is probably under a corporation with overseas operations.

How does this tie into an internal ethical struggle? While capitalism itself is not by default a morally bankrupt system of exchange and survival, the global inequality between developed and developing countries makes it so that the current global supply chain is built on rampant exploitation.

Firstly, the harvesting of raw materials, such as unrefined minerals and unprocessed crops, usually takes place in third-world countries in Asia and Africa. Although raw materials are integral to the production of finished goods, they are usually the least profitable to sell. This is because each consequent step of refinement adds additional value. For example, freshly harvested coffee beans are deemed more valuable after they have been processed at a factory, and even more valuable after they have been roasted and packaged for the consumer.

However, the resources required for large fleets of processing factories and industries is rarely found in the countries that produce raw materials, forcing them to sell the least valuable component of production while the lion’s share of the profits accrue in more well-resourced regions of the world.

Secondly, sometimes wealthy investors will build factories in developing countries to produce finished goods. Problem solved? No. The main incentive to invest in a factory in a developing country is the cheap local labour. This means that while local workers produce goods that will make the investors large profits, these profits depend on their low wages.

This practice is known as outsourcing, and has been a dominant business practice in global capitalism since the 1980s. During this decade, a political and economic set of policies defined by the umbrella term of Neoliberalism rose in popularity, promoted by the governments of President Ronald Reagan in the United States, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom.

Neoliberal policies encourage investment across government borders through low government interference in the free market, low income taxes on capital returns, relaxed labour laws to increase profits, and low regulation for global entrepreneurial ventures in general.

Before this time, there were strict laws regarding employing workers from a business’s country of location. Gradually, as legislation shifted, more and more corporations began setting up operations in developing countries such as China, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.

The overall effects of outsourcing cannot be written off as wholly detrimental. Outsourcing greatly boosted the incomes of some developing countries, albeit not always in equal measure across the economic classes. China, for example, greatly reduced its poverty levels and joined countries such as the US and UK as an economic giant in the global system.

However, a glaring problem with outsourcing is that the demand for cheap labour produces incentives to grossly underpay workers and overlook dangerous working conditions, long hours, and mistreatment in the workplace, all in the name of profit. You can read more on this topic in these blog posts, both heavily citing articles and studies of the global supply chain.

Thirdly, the manufacturing of many goods has the unfortunate side-effect of massive environmental destruction. Refinement processes produce waste that is often disposed of incorrectly into the surrounding area, polluting land and water bodies. Additionally, the production of single-use plastics such as disposable water bottles and coffee capsules further encourages waste and pollution.

This is where the concept of Ethical Consumption comes to play. Many people are appalled to learn that some of the brands they regularly buy from pollute the environment, or exploit their foreign workers in ways they would never be allowed to in the developed world. Upon learning this, they seek ways to withhold their support from the offending corporations, and instead buy from brands that incorporate environmentalism into their practices, respect their workers globally, and pay a fair amount for the raw materials they use for their finished products.

In the quest to consume ethically, how would the average Canadian ascertain that a given brand is not tainted by exploitation and pollution along its supply chain?

One approach is to eliminate from your shopping basket all the brands you deem as exploitative. You could scour the internet for news stories that implicate a given brand in wrongdoing. You could research into the location of a given brand’s operations, from where they source their raw materials to their final production, looking into whether the labour laws in these countries are fairly enforced. You could research a given brand’s environmental policy.

This approach can certainly aid a lot of consumers in making informed decisions. However, research is limited to what is reported, what is found out. Many exploitative elements within the global supply chain are covered up, or completely undocumented. Eliminating given brands based on your research means that these brands were visible enough to have journalists investigate their practices. Many lesser-known yet still massively profitable brands engage in exploitation. The rise of business monopolies in the 21st century means that a brand which comes out clean after research can very well be owned by a larger, more exploitative brand that still profits from its sales.

Another approach that you as an ethically-conscious consumer can take is to look out for certain symbols on a product while shopping. Symbols such as the Fairtrade™, Organic™, and Cruelty-Free™ logos signify to a given brand has made efforts to obtain a certification that deems their production process ethical by certain standards, whether it be avoiding animal cruelty, being environmentally conscious, or paying fair wages.

A problem arises, however, when we consider the fact that such certifications can sometimes only be surface-level signifiers without effective practice on the ground. Whether due to bribery, haphazard enforcement of standards, or flawed standards to begin with, sometimes very exploitative production processes can get away with being labelled otherwise.

In my opinion, the most effective approach to ethical consumption lies in the practice of minimalism, defined in the context of consumption as an effort to own only what you need. While the two approaches mentioned above can certainly reduce the harmful practices that a consumer supports with their shopping dollar, it is indeed true that “There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.” Nearly all goods and services contain one form of exploitation or another.

This is, of course, not to say that all forms of exploitation are equal. The child slavery rampant in cocoa farming in Africa cannot be compared to a minimum wage, entry-level job for a franchise store in North America. However, given the complex and interlinked web of the global supply chain, products tend to contain materials from a variety of places and a variety of ethical conditions.

This means that the best way to reduce your support of exploitation is to simply buy less. For example, buy secondhand clothing instead of shopping for the latest trends, avoid impulse-shopping and practice mindfulness while making purchases, stick to a strict shopping list during regular grocery trips, and perform annual spring-cleanings to take stock of your accumulated belongings.

The benefits of this approach include a lowered financial burden, freeing up money to save and invest, and a reduction of Canada’s overall consumer waste.

In conclusion, I believe that ethical consumption can be best achieved by a combination of minimalism and research into brand policy. However, moral perfection in this area is nearly impossible, excluding a retreat into the woods à la Henry David Thoreau.