Supermarket shelves are dominated by two kinds of butter: conventional dairy-based butter or plant-based vegan butter made from palm oil. Vegan butters are more sustainable than dairy butter, but ideally should be palm-oil free. I found two that I like.
Still undecided whether to choose dairy or vegan butter? Using cow’s milk as an example, here’s a list of the three most basic ethical issues with dairy farming. Solutions are also explored.
Whenever I come home to Ireland I have the dilemma of which kind of butter to buy: conventional dairy-based butter or plant-based vegan butter. In California, the choice is pretty straightforward – it’s now fairly easy to find good-quality, ethical and affordable vegan butters. In Ireland, however, the choice is not so clear, as I’ll explain over the next couple of posts. Or at least it wasn’t a clear choice at first…
Blackstone Group bought a 10% stake in Oatly, back in 2020, and this incited a lot of talk of boycotting @Oatly products. Should we not be supportive that @Blackstone took steps in the right direction? Or do we want them to be “bad” forever?
Should you always support vegan brands? More specifically: Should you support vegan brands owned by less ethical parent corporations? I’ll take a look at some brands, and look at reasons to support them and situations where you should not.
Evaluating products that contain palm oil is tricky. This first case study looks at Nutiva shortening, certified by Palm Done Right.
It’s competition time again on the Green Stars Project! Your mission: Write a review of a business or product that includes a rating for social and environmental impact (on a scale of 1-5 Green Stars). For this round, I want to include a theme: Equality, whether racial, economic, gender or a mix of all three. … Continue reading Ethical review competition to benefit 1951 Coffee Co.
Dean Foods, the largest dairy company in the US, filed for bankruptcy this week. Sad news for employees, but perhaps a positive indicator for ethical consumerism. Is the myth of the ethical consumer becoming a reality? (The myth of the ethical consumer refers to the idea that, while many of us prioritize ethical choices in … Continue reading Dean Foods bankruptcy and ethical consumerism
I had always intended to write a post on the top things you can do to reduce your footprint. But I procrastinated, partly because I never felt that I’d done enough research and partly because the topic has been covered pretty widely. However, many of the lists that you’ll find online don’t really hit on … Continue reading Ethical Consumerism, Part 9 – How to reduce your carbon footprint
I think it’s worth writing a post to explain why I took the direction of user-generated ratings with the Green Stars Project. There’s a pretty good chance that you take advantage of user-generated content on a regular basis. Perhaps you were just looking up the difference between herons and cranes on Wikipedia, and then went … Continue reading Ethical Consumerism, Part 5: Why we need User-Generated Ratings.
