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I agree completely Rouge... It's about education. When we teach by example & explaination we are sowing a seed. Those seeds when we water them continually sprout and grow into a forest... Thaht's what we need.
A new generation that truly thinks outside the circle, outside the dollar & embraces the march for compassion in business, religion, politics & humanity... It actually starts at home... Where else!? :hug:
We've switched to Aktavite (Australian made and owned!) and I avoid the 'bad' stuff when I know about it.
Unfortunately I have to buy the tea/coffee supplies for my work and I have to get Nescafe :( I would love to get fairtrade, but the cost would get noticed! :wall:
I worry about most things I buy... clothes too. I was looking in the sports shop today at t-shirts and thought 'are these sweatshop products?'. I didn't buy any :o Gonna buy some from some organic cotton online shop (after making sure they don't grow their cotton using our precious Murray River water!) *sigh* it's very hard being ethical!! :shakehead:
One question for everyone - what about 'home brand' products? It's almost impossible to know if they're ethical - isn't it? Any idea? :dunno:
Home brand worries me because some of them are actually made by the big companies. I remember watching a segment on it 10 years ago and a lot of the cheaper brands were actually made by the top dogs.
**Busts out the zippo and begins singing...**
I believe the children are our future....teach them well and let them lead the way...
With Home Brands, I tend to only buy HB if their content is Australian.
I cannot know who makes it, but at least I know they are using Australian wheat for their flours and Australian Garlic in their Crucshed Garlic...
Hi all. I am coming to the discussion late but here I go anyway :)
I wanted to add a few notes about palm oil and its impacts. I have been to Kalimantan twice about 5 years apart and have seen the forest devastation from the air first hand. The first time I didn't actually notice any. The second time the plantations were just so obvious and encroaching on everything.
Palm oil is in so many items that you wouldn't even think of and in itself is not a bad ingredient. But it is not produced sustainably. The roundtable for sustainable palm oil production basically provides companies with a way of saying they are doing something while not doing anything. And this issue does not just affect orangutans. In truth orangutans are one of the cutest animals affected by palm oil but are far from the only ones. They are an ambassador species for all of the other plant, animal and other species that need these forests to survive. This includes humans. Traditional Indonesian communities being 'encouraged' to sell their home lands, leaving them with no way of providing for their families. Palm oil plantations are also well known for human rights abuses.
And additionally, these forests are felled and then burnt. This releases huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. If we just protected the forests of the world a bit better we would have a lot less environmental worries. This issue affects the entire human population. And we simply can't expect countries like Indonesia to halt a product that is in such huge demand from countries such as ours. The people there are too poor, and need too much like decent health care for them to be as worried about environmental issues.
OK off my soap box now he he.
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And they keep at it - my Dad told me about the boycott over 20 years ago .
My kids are great, they don't ask to eat smarties and when they are at a friend's house my 5 year old will accept food "as long as it's not nestle, we don't eat nestle":lol: Luckily most of my friends know about the boycott so they just promise it's not nestle and carry on.
I have actually contacted the supermarket chains and asked if I can be told which brands are Nestle. Until then I will not buy homebrand from them. Hopefully I get a response soon, will post in here.
Also I remember someone mentioning after a trip to a third world country, there was a big billboard selling formula in the street, saying something like, 'Be like your Western cousins...'
Its disgusting what they will do to the uninformed.
Hey guys just FYI...following on from one of the links in here, I downloaded an App for my iPod called "shop ethical!" just type it in to the app store. It's great, it's got a list of pretty much every product in the supermarket and who it's owned by. It's then got symbols stating whether it has praises, less praises, no info, lesser criticisms, criticism or Boycotts. It also says if there is an industry alert and if Aus owned. When you go into details it lists all the reasons for those ratings and they are colour coded (green = praise etc).
I used it this morning in the supermarket and it's great! Swapped a few products to what i'd usually by as well so i'm feeling pretty hapy :)
Oh CQ!! You're ace! I just downloaded it onto my iPhone and it's awesome!! I wont shop without it again! ;)
Oh! CQ does it have who the HomeBrand products are owned by? That's a bit concerning, I can afford to do the occasional switch, but I'm not sure I can afford to add 20cents to every product...
It's great isn't it!
Nelle - no it doesn't have "homebrand" in there but does each supermarket have their own name for their homebrand products?
It does however talk about Woolies in a not so favourable light! The strikes against them are to do with gaming, indirect tobacco, greenwash, gaming and misleading advertising. But then again so does Coles so what can you do...
CQ- I just used it!! I was at IGA and was going to buy Ovaltine (as an alternative to Milo ;) ) but then after using that app, i went for the **** Smith brand OzeChoc!
My first "ethically aware" purchase! :clap:
From Woolworths:
Oh well, I wont buy any of their homebrand then!:
Thank you for your enquiry via the Woolworths website.
In regards to your query on the Homebrand product made by Nestle, this
information is considered to be company sensitive.
Kind Regards
Supermarket Support
Woolworths Limited
Woolworths 'own brand' stuff isn't made here at all. They import all their canned stuff and dont use australian grown vegetables in their frozens.
IGA's own brand is australian however. I have a list of some IGA products that I know are australian made I will post them later.
Aww dang Kelly!
Kelly maybe inform them that their lack of information only adds to the current boycott situation, because if people don't know for sure they won't be taking the risk.