Your money is a vote
Companies make what sells. When enough people choose products made with clean energy and without waste, with respect for people and without forced labour, and with respect for nature and without clearing forests, companies will notice. And the ones that do it well will grow. That makes every purchase a small vote for the kind of business you want more of. Shoppers around the world have spent $118,949,500,035 on organic food and drink so far this year, and every one of those dollars told a farmer and a shop what people want.
To vote well you need information, and that is harder to come by than it should be, because most of what a company says about itself is marketing.
Look past the label
“Eco”, “natural” and “green” on their own mean very little. A company that is serious about its impact usually has something more specific to show for it:
- An independent certification for the product itself, such as Fairtrade, FSC for wood and paper, or the EU Ecolabel.
- Targets with numbers and dates, and yearly reports on progress against them, including the years it fell short.
- Claims about the whole business. A company that announces one recycled product line while the rest of its range is unchanged is advertising.
None of this is a guarantee, but a company that can’t show any of it is asking you to take its word.
The greenest product is often the one you already have
Buying better helps. Buying less helps more, and it is the part that is entirely up to you. Households, shops and restaurants have thrown away 861,358,449 tonnes of food so far this year, a lot of it bought and never eaten.
Shopping is one of the quickest ways to feel better for an afternoon. Before a purchase it is worth asking whether you need the thing, or whether it is filling a gap that has little to do with the thing at all. That question leads back to how we live, which is where we think most of the real change has to start. We write more about it on the About page, and the Footprint section shows what everyday consumption adds up to.
Industry can work like nature
Some of the most hopeful examples come from companies that work together. In Kalundborg, Denmark, an oil refinery began piping surplus gas to a neighbouring plasterboard factory in 1972. The arrangement grew into what is now called the Kalundborg Symbiosis, in which the town’s companies and the municipality pass heat, steam, water and by-products between them, so that one company’s leftovers become another’s raw material. By 2024 the network included the municipality and about 20 public and private organisations. It is the old idea that nature has no waste, put to work in an industrial town.
