Blue Ridge Eco Shop

How Could We've Known?

Posted by Paige Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:18:00 GMT

My idea of an eco-shop is providing more than just environmentally friendly products. I believe in educating myself and others. I believe in promoting and selling products that come from companies that are good for the planet, but also good for the people as well. I believe in fair wages, fair working conditions and hours, and fair benefits. This should be a standard, in my mind, for all businesses large and small.

In the shop I get asked frequently why I don’t carry this brand or that brand, but I carry a competitors. I am very particular on what I do carry. It’s important to me to not only provide a safe, environmentally-friendly, healthy and affordable products (which can be tough enough), but to also only carry brands and companies that I know and trust. It’s my job to research companies and make sure they are both ethical to the environment and to their workers. It’s an atribute of a small store that I can know every single product in the shop and know about the company who makes it. I hope that’s what my customers value in the shop as well. And yes, that may mean I might not carry a specific brand. If they can’t provide credible background on the working conditions of the plants and the ingeridient that go into their products, I won’t stock them.

I can understand that in larger retailers and companies, not every employee is going to know everything about the product and the process in which it is made. But that doesn’t mean somebody in the company shouldn’t. In an effort to share, I am pasting an eye-opening list of "7 Corporations You’ll Want to Avoid" from Co-Op America. I was surprised by many of them. It is dishearting and discusting the low standards of these companies. Please read on:


1. Which major retailer saw its New Dehli factories raided in October 2007 by authorities acting on a tip from an undercover newspaper reporter who found children as young as 10 sewing garments for a children’s apparel line? They also had 2 deaths in one year of under age workers on the job.(The GAP)

2. Which fast food company (owner of KFC and Taco Bell) received the dismally low score of 1 out of 100 in the "Climate Counts Company Scorecard," a report that that judged companies on their commitment to reversing climate change? (YUM! Brands)

3. Which popular retailer of apparel and toys got busted for the ninth time by Students and Scholars against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), which uncovered sweatshop abuses (unpaid wages, illegal working hours, unsafe working conditions) at a producer factor in China in 2007? (Disney)

4. Which electronics company was revealed in November 2007 to be at least partly responsible for more than 100 current or former Superfund sites, some in the USA? (Superfund sites are locations designated by the Environmental Protection Agency as being so contaminated by toxic chemicals that they are dangerous to human health.) (GE)

5. Which chocolate-maker, long under fire by social justice advocates concerned about rampant child labor in the cocoa industry, has also become a dominating force in the bottled water industry, generating tons of plastic-bottle waste, and drawing criticism for polluting groundwater near its bottling facilities? (Nestle–again, some in the USA)

6. Which popular catalog company was the subject of a 2006 National Labor Committee report documenting abuses at its Saidan factory in Jordan including: human trafficking of guest workers, confiscation of passports, 118-hour work weeks, wages below the legal minimum, no sick days, and unsanitary working conditions? (LL Bean)

7. Which chemical company was named the number one polluter in America by a May 2008 report from the Political Economy Research Institute called the “Toxic 100 index”? (The index is based on EPA Toxics Release Inventory data, and ranks the nation’s largest companies based on the quantity of their emissions, relative toxicity of chemicals emitted, and proximity to population centers, among other criteria.) (DuPont)