After Sonya Blan’s thoughtful piece on meat a couple of editions ago, we have news that a meat-free or meat-reduced diet might make you happier, as well as healthier (not to mention kinder on animals and the environment). Naturally, we also have some handy info to help you out.
Gabrielle Chariton peered into our bins and unearthed our landfills to dig up the story of packaging. Why do we use so much of it? And how can we use less?
An Amazon.co.uk warehouse during the Christmas rush. Photo credit: D K (Flickr)
Ashleigh Stallard is here to dispel the myth that you can’t live according to your ideals without emptying your bank account and spending every waking moment researching supply chains. Ashleigh runs the design blog Shift.
By Tony Ryan.
We owe the word “boycott” to Charles C Boycott, but Charles didn’t stage the first boycott in history, or popularise the practice – he copped the boycott that gave boycotting its name. An English landowner in Ireland, Boycott was economically shunned by his entire community in 1880 after he evicted tenants who couldn’t pay.
[pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Boycotts can be personal affairs, as with my own (mostly) steadfast refusal to eat fast food (12 years running, if you don’t count one regrettable, alcohol-soaked lapse).[/pullquote]
Charles may have been incensed that his name was borrowed that way, and, being an old-timey member of the landed class, he may have been the kind of bloke to be equally angered that boycotting caught on as a popular mode of activism – the most popular form, if you ask George Monbiot. Since Charles’s day, boycotts, mass refusals to patronise a company – or even a whole country – on the grounds of its behaviour, have been many and various: they’re prompted by concerns ranging from animal welfare and workers’ rights to environmental degradation. They can be well organised, as with the famous Delano Grape Strike of the ’60s, in which over 14 million Americans refused to eat grapes produced by the labour of underpaid workers in the States, or they can peter out with a whimper. They can span hemispheres and beyond, as has the decades-long fight over Nestlé’s sales of baby formula to developing countries, and they can be personal affairs, as with my own (mostly) steadfast refusal to eat fast food (12 years running, if you don’t count one regrettable, alcohol-soaked lapse).
Nathalie Laurence’s guide to ethical travel. Nathalie blogs at Barefoot Earth.
by Gabrielle Chariton. Gabrielle is a Sydney-based freelance writer.
Photo credit: Dave Gingrich (Flickr)
Who hasn’t heard something about ethical fashion one day, only to have it contradicted by another source the next day? There’s a wealth of blogs about ethical fashion on the web, but which are the best and most trustworthy? Jess Noble has you covered.
Erin Rhoads is a zero-waste hero. After working out how to live without plastics, she moved on to zero-waste living, which entails leaving as little rubbish behind as possible. And she’s keen to share her tips with Otter readers.
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth made waves around the world when it burst onto screens in 2006. It won the 2007 Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and spurred the creation of non-profit organisation Climate Reality Project, which unites people around the world to share the message of climate change.
Film is a powerful medium to share important messages about the environment, sustainability and human or animal rights. Here are six documentaries that turn the spotlight on important environmental and ethical issues facing us today. Continue Reading →
Photo credit: The Bees (Flickr)
Got a case of affluenza? Want a new challenge or just love the idea of buying nothing new? Jump on board Buy Nothing New Month this October and be liberated from the consumption cycle. Otter catches up with veteran BNNMer Alexis Drevikovsky for her tips on how to survive and thrive these 31 days. Continue Reading →
