Green Sky Thinking

With more obvious individual benefits and a lower price point, food and drink is an easy access point into the ethical market for the consumer. Last year saw this market broaden into the mainstream with ethical sales now accounting for 5.1% of the UK’s total food and drink sales.

Our view is that we will soon see a similar move in ethical clothing, product and homeware design. On the back of extensive media interest and coverage, sales of Fairtrade and organic clothing grew by an astonishing 79% last year and given the recent increase in high street ethical options this is likely to gain further momentum.

Consumers are suffering from green fatigue; overwhelmed by labels, information and the sheer complexity of a choice process where trade-offs are a part of everyday life and there are no ethical absolutes.

People are driven by positive choice coupled with easy action – they want brands and retailers to choose ethically on their behalf. By integrating sound ethical values into business, the brand/retailer becomes a proxy for ethical reliability.

The ethical market accounts for 2% of the UK economy, yet 75% of people claim to want to live a more socially responsible lifestyle. Few are prepared to sacrifice price or quality to do the right thing and less than 5% are prepared to substantially rethink their lifestyles.

The transparency of the Internet provides a key tool in the market’s changing sense of its own power. Businesses are more exposed and the consumer is more vigilant, with higher expectations.

Word of mouth (or mouse) accounts for up to 60% of brand awareness when it comes to ethical reputation and is the most influential factor in informing ethical choices and long term ethical beliefs. This indicates a clear preference for simple, objective, morally unbiased information, as well as the reinforcement of knowing and respecting the values of the opinion former.

The world is never the world of your childhood but in our generation and those to follow, this is increasingly true. And it’s not simply about perception. The democratisation of information and the growing threat of global warming have the potential to unite the world for the first time around common objectives and a sense of ourselves as a species. If we don’t acknowledge our responsibilities to other human beings on the other side of the world, our children will pay the price of our ambivalence.

From me to we, us to them: Despite indications of self interest there is still a growing cultural shift in consciousness towards the collective. Conspicuous consumption is being replaced by conscientious consumption. Doing something, whatever one’s motives, is better than doing nothing.

Green Sky Thinking - Ethical Planning Partnership. Registered LLP No. OC334880