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who’s who this Issue’s editor Tim Huntproofing Ciara Maginness (littlebluepencil.co.uk)writers/researchers Jane Turner, Tim Hunt, Leonie Nimmo, Rob Harrison, Heather Webb, Anna Clayton, Joanna Long, Josie Wexler, Ruth Strange, Mackenzie Denyer, Clare Carlile, Francesca de la Torreregular contributors Simon Birch, Bryony Moore, Shaun Fensom design and layout Adele Armistead (moonloft.com), Jane Turnercover © Sebastianknight | Dreamstime cartoons Marc Roberts, Andy Vine, Richard Liptrotad sales Simon Birchsubscriptions Elizabeth Chaterpress enquiries Simon Birch, Tim Huntenquiries Heather Webbweb editor Georgina Rawesthanks also to Eleanor Boyce, Anna Lampard, Ashraf Hamad, Hannah Shepherd

All material correct one month before cover date and © Ethical Consumer Research Association Ltd. ISSN 0955 8608.

Printed with vegetable ink by RAP Spiderweb Ltd, c/o the Commercial Centre, Clowes Centre, Hollinwood, Oldham OL9 7LY. 0161 947 3700. Paper: 100% post-consumer waste, chlorine-free and sourced from the only UK paper merchant supplying only recycled papers – Paperback (www.paperbackpaper.co.uk).

Retail distribution is handled by Central Books on 0845 458 9911. Ethical Consumer is a member of INK (independent news collective), an association of radical and alternative publishers - www.ink.uk.com.

We are a Living Wage employer and a multi-stakeholder co-op.

about the advertisersECRA checks out advertisers before accepting their ads and reserves the right to refuse any advert.Covered in previous Product Guides: Co-operative phone & broadband (145), Ecology Building Society (161), Kingfisher Toothpaste (165) Plamil (169).Other advertisers: Abundance, Animal Aid, Ethex, Bhopal Medical Appeal, Green Building Store, Infinity Wholefoods, Investing Ethically, Medical Action for Palestine, New Internationalist, Refugee Action, Sharenergy.

Ethical Consumer Research Association LtdUnit 21, 41 Old Birley Street, Manchester, M15 5RFt: 0161 226 2929 (12 noon-6pm) e: enquiries@ethicalconsumer.org for general enquiries shop@ethicalconsumer.org for subscriptions.

Contentsethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

06 food & home pesticidesinschoolfood,Body

Shop&Pukkateas,neonics,Banksy

08 boycotts Boots,Amazon,USIsraelbill

09 climate offshorewind,ArtNotOil

38 clothes jeansupdate,Craftivistprotest

39 tax justice Scottishscandal,lobbying

47 this ethical life tryingandsometimesfailingtobe

anethicalconsumer

49 Lush Spring Prize 2018 supportingregenerativecultures

50 money solarAfrica,pensiondivestments,

carbondivestedfunds

51 save our bank Co-opGrouppullsout

Follow us: @EC_magazine

Ethical Consumer Magazine

product guides

news

regulars

Dairy milk10 pricesandanimalwelfare

12 scoretableandbestbuys

14 companyprofiles

15 small-scaledairyfarmers

Plant milk16 sustainabilityissues

18 scoretable,bestbuys&companyprofiles

22 makingyourown

Bottled water23theproblemwithbottledwater

26 scoretable,BestBuys,companyprofiles

31 Greenpeace’splasticcampaign

34 tapwatercampaigns&reusables

Beer & lager40 thefootprintofyourpint

42 scoretable,bestbuysandcompanyprofiles

44 DIYalternatives

46 christmas gift subscriptions takeoutasubscriptionorgivea

giftthatlastsayear

52 letters aregularforumforreaders’views

54 inside view StopFundingHatecampaign

p2�

p49

p54

feature

48 companies house newrestrictionstoinformation

aboutcompanies’shareholders

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Editorialethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

In this issue of the magazine we concentrate on drinks, specifically milk, plant milks, bottled water, beer and lager.

From mega dairies to the badger cull, milk and dairy is a controversial staple of the UK diet. Anna Clayton takes a closer look at those companies operating in the dairy industry (see page 10).

Meanwhile Jyoti Fernandes lists alternative options which promote higher animal welfare standards and support small-scale farmers (see page 15).

For those who avoid dairy milk altogether, Anna also casts her eye over the market for plant-based alternatives. While consumption of these may negate the animal rights problems associated with dairy milk these options aren’t issue free. Anna compares the ethical credentials of a variety of plant-based milks including soya, rice, almond, oat and coconut milk on page 16.

In our guide to beer & lager Joanna Long shines a spotlight on 10 vegan and mainly organic brands that are available in the UK alongside some interesting community and co-operative brewing projects. In addition she rates and ranks the more mainstream brands that dominate the supermarket shelves uncovering a range of issues from water consumption to transportation costs.

On page 23 Jane Turner investigates the marketing phenomenon that is bottled water. Her conclusion may seem obvious to many of you – buy a reusable bottle and drink tap water – but we hope to use this guide to spread the message that bottled water is an environmentally disastrous rip-off that should be avoided wherever possible. The guide includes advice about what to do about sparkling water, what tap water campaigns you can get involved in and where to buy your reusable ‘bottle for life’. Greenpeace has contributed an article outlining their campaign against plastic pollution.

In Inside View, Simon Birch (on page 54) takes a look at the work we have been doing with Stop Funding Hate.

In this Issue we cover the launch of the 2018 Lush Spring Prize. The award, which saw its inaugural prize-giving event in May this year, is back for a second year and is now open for nominations. The prize is for projects of all shapes and sizes that are run to regenerate their local communities and environment. Find out more and how to apply on page 49.

This month we have sadly said goodbye to staff member Simon Robinson. Simon had been with us a number of years and was a valued member of the team. He moves on with our thanks and we wish him well in his new job.

On a happier note, this Issue sees the introduction of a new light-hearted page written by Colin Birch. He’ll be taking a sideways look at the trials and tribulations of trying to be an ethical consumer on his This Ethical Life page (see page 47). We are aware that the content and subject matter of the magazine can be a little heavy and we hope this new page goes some way to rectifying this. We’d love to know what you think of it and our other content so please do send us your feedback either via email or by letter.

Tim Hunt Editor

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Food & HomeNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

Food for thoughtThe Pesticide Action Network tells us about its report which reveals toxic pesticides found in the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme.

In England, every school child aged four to six is eligible to receive one free piece of fruit or veg per day under the Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS).

On the face of it, this is a wonderful initiative aimed at promoting healthy eating in young children and helping them to achieve their 5-a-day goal for fruit and vegetable consumption. But is it really providing the best start for our children as intended?

Cocktail of pesticides

‘Food for Thought’ is a new report published by the Pesticide Action Network UK (PAN UK) on 5th September, just as children returned to school. It raises some important questions about the level of pesticide residues routinely found in the produce provided through the SFVS.

Based on testing conducted by the government between 2005 and 2016, PAN UK found residues of 123 different pesticides. They include known carcinogens, hormone disrupting chemicals, developmental toxins and reproductive toxins.

84% of the produce tested positive for one residue while, in two-thirds of the produce tested, the residues of multiple different pesticides were detected.

This is deeply worrying because very little research has been carried out into how these different pesticides interact with each other. The result is that we simply don’t know enough about the health effects that consuming this ‘cocktail’ of pesticide residues might be having.

What we do know for sure is that young children are particularly susceptible to the long-term effects of exposure to pesticides. Their bodies are still forming and pesticide exposure can interfere with the development of particular organs and lead to health problems in later life.

Switching to organic

PAN UK research indicates that for a mere 1p extra per child per day the government could switch the produce provided through the SFVS to organic. Not only would this reduce pesticide exposure for all children currently receiving produce through the scheme but it could also provide much-needed support to grow the British organic sector.

PAN UK does not want to be alarmist or to discourage children from eating fruit and vegetables as part of a healthy diet. But we do believe that parents have a right to know what is being fed to their children. Our hope is that parents and other concerned members of the public will use this information to lobby the UK government to do more to protect children from pesticides.

The government is currently considering what to do about pesticides after Brexit so now is the time to take action. You can email the Department of Health (http://pan-uk.eaction.org.uk/lobby/food-for-thought) and download PAN UK’s report (www.pan-uk.org/food-for-thought)

Ethical companies change handsIn September, two ethical companies changed hands: Body Shop and Pukka Herbs.

Pioneering cruelty-free cosmetics company Body Shop is no longer owned by the world’s biggest cosmetics company L’Oréal. L’Oréal bought it in 2006, much to the disappointment of many Body Shop ethical customers.

Body Shop has now been bought by Brazilian company Natura. Its score has increased from 3.5 to 9. Natura is the largest Brazilian cosmetics company and claims to be similar to Body Shop in that it has “sustainable use of biodiversity in our products, a belief in ethics in management and fair relations with communities”. In 2014, it became the first publicly traded company to be certified as a ‘B Corp’, meeting certain standards of social and environmental performance and transparency.

Body Shop is now also no longer linked to Nestlé which owns 23% of L’Oréal.

Whilst Body Shop is a cruelty-free company, there is a lack of clarity around Natura’s animal testing policy and so Naturewatch is maintaining a boycott call against Body Shop and its parent Natura until it is told by Natura that it operates a fixed cut-off date animal testing policy and does not operate in China, the same boycott demands it had for L’Oréal.

It remains to be seen whether Body Shop customers will return to the brand now it’s ownership has improved.

Meanwhile, Unilever has bought the organic tea company Pukka Herbs, which means Pukka’s score has fallen from 13.5 to 4.5. Pukka is no longer a Best Buy for teas or coconut oil.

Because they’re worth itThe Humane Society have issued a public call urging L’Oréal to support their efforts to ban cosmetic animal testing worldwide.

More than 200 companies in the cosmetics industry have already thrown their weight behind the organisations’ #BeCrueltyFree campaign but L’Oréal – the industry’s largest player – has stood out for its failure to support the effort.

L’Oréal says it no longer tests its products or ingredients on animals, yet the company continues to sell its products in China, where pre-market animal testing is legally required for all imported and special-use cosmetics, and new-to-the-world cosmetic ingredients may also be tested on animals. In China alone, an estimated 375,000 rabbits and other animals continue to suffer in cosmetic tests each year.

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Food & Homeethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Art the Arms FairA five-day art exhibition that was set-up in opposition to the Defence & Security Equipment International 2017 (DSEI), one of the biggest arms fairs in the world, raised £205,000 from the auction of an exclusive new Banksy piece. The arms fair took place in September in Docklands, London.

The piece, Civilian Drone Strike (see right), depicts drones destroying a children’s drawing of a house. The money raised from the sale will be split between Campaign Against Arms Trade and Reprieve.

Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said: “This money will be used to ensure we mobilise even more people against the immoral activities of arms companies, and against the next arms fair, so that we can stop it from happening. It’s

time to shut it down for good.”

The arms fair was attended by 1600 companies, as well as human rights-abusing regimes from around the world: including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Algeria and the Philippines.

Thirty-seven countries and major markets have already passed laws to end or limit cosmetic animal testing, including the 28-member countries of the European Union, India, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and Guatemala. L’Oréal and other international cosmetic brands already comply with laws in these countries.

Urge L’Oréal to support the #BeCrueltyFree campaign to ban cosmetics animal testing forever: www.hsi.org/loreal

9 out of top 10 garden retailers say no to neonicsNine of the top ten leading garden retailers and garden centres don’t want the flowering plants they sell to be grown with bee-harming neonicotinoid pesticides and have told suppliers not to use them, according to Friends of the Earth. The nine are B&Q, Wyevale, Dobbies, Klondyke, Blue Diamond, Notcutts, Squires, Hillier and Hillview. Notcutts, Dobbies and Hillier Nurseries were our recommended garden centres in our 2015 guide – www.ethicalconsumer.org/buyersguides/homegarden/gardencentres

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‘Absolutely nothing’ by Serann.

However, one of the biggest garden retailers – Homebase – has yet to commit to working with suppliers to end the use of restricted neonicotinoids, despite being contacted by thousands of people via a Friends of the Earth online action.

An EU-wide moratorium, which came into force in December 2013, restricts the use of three neonicotinoids – imidacloprid, clothianidin and thiamethoxam – on crops attractive to bees. The ban does not cover all neonicotinoid pesticides or all crops, such as wheat. The EU is expected to vote in the next few months on whether to extend the restrictions to all crops – and whether to make the ban permanent.

Earlier in 2017, B&Q became the first retailer to announce it was banning suppliers from using all nine neonicotinoid pesticides in its flowering plant range from early 2018. The other eight garden centres have only committed to stop using the three banned neonicotinoids.

Friends of the Earth bee campaigner Nick Rau said: “The UK government must act on neonicotinoids by backing a full and permanent EU ban on these chemicals across Europe – and pledging to keep any restrictions post-Brexit.”

Sign the Homebase petition – https://act.foe.co.uk/act/get-bee-harming-pesticides-out-garden-plants

‘Warhead 3’ by Peter Kennard.

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BoycottsNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

US bill to ban involvement in international boycotts48 US senators and 256 congressmen have signed a bill which would make boycotting Israel a federal crime.

The ‘Israel Anti-Boycott Bill’ reinforces rules that bar businesses from boycotting a US ally. If passed, it will extend the ban to boycotts called by international governmental organisations, such as the UN or the EU.

Its chief Senate sponsor has expressed willingness to amend the bill, which has been condemned by the American Council for Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and members of Amnesty International. The proposal has been referred to three Senate committees for review, but looks likely to pass in some form, with it having well over the 218 votes needed for a majority in the House of Representatives, and only three short of a majority in the Senate.

It comes in the wake of a UN Resolution last year, which recognised Israeli settlements in Palestine to be “a flagrant violation of international law”. The bill opposes UN pressure for divestment from Israel, Congress has stated, and would make even indirect support for such boycotts a crime, such as providing information or financial backing.

What the law would mean in terms of punishment has, however, been widely debated: ACLU’s claim that “violations would be punishable by civil and criminal penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison” has been widely contested. But even those with a more moderate understanding suggest that the punishment may be a fine of $250,000 or more.

The bill continues long-running US opposition to the BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement begun in 2005 to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestine. BDS has gained support from NGOs, Unions, and local councils over the past decade.

Boycott AmazonAmazon’s tax bill has halved since last year. Ethical Consumer is renewing its call for a consumer boycott.

The figures show that Amazon has done little to change its tax-avoiding arrangements. It paid just £7.4 million this year, despite turnover rising from £946 million to £1.46 billion on Amazon’s UK operations. That’s 11 times less corporation tax than traditional UK bookshops, like Waterstones, pay.1

The bill halved because it is calculated on profit, not on overall turnover, and Amazon’s profit fell last year. But a large part of this fall can be accounted for in terms of HMRC’s rules on profit calculation.

Every year, Amazon gives its full-time employees £1000 worth of shares. These count as expenses, and can therefore be deducted from calculations of taxable profit. Shares granted in August 2015 have doubled in value – which means double the amount of deductions. Amazon’s share value has gone up; its tax bill has gone down.

Meanwhile, Amazon has been ordered by the EU to repay £222m in illegal state aid to Luxembourg. The tax deal had allowed almost three-quarters of the company’s profits to go untaxed from 2006 to 2014, allowing it to pay four times less tax than local rivals. The company has been ordered to repay the full amount plus interest.

Amazon stated ““We believe that Amazon did not receive any special treatment from Luxembourg and that we paid tax in full accordance with both Luxembourg and international tax law. We will study the commission’s ruling and consider our legal options, including an appeal.”

Check out all our ‘Alternatives to Amazon’ shopping guides on our website – www.ethicalconsumer.org/boycotts

References: 1 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/12/amazon-pays-11-times-less-corporation-tax-than-traditional-booksellers

Boots to drop price of emergency contraceptiveCampaigners have celebrated a boycott victory against Boots after the high-street pharmacy announced plans to drop the price of ‘morning after’ pills.

The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) called for the boycott in July, after Boots refused to cut prices, despite charging twice as much as other high-street chains for the ‘morning after’ pill stating, “We would not want to be accused of incentivising inappropriate use”. The boycott, known as #justsaynon, has been backed by MPs and women’s rights campaigners across the UK.

Clare Murphy, Director of External Affairs at BPAS, said, “We are pleased to see that in future Boots will be providing a cheaper emergency contraceptive product across its stores nationwide.” Boots’ new generic version will cost £15.99, compared to the previous price of £28.25 for Levonelle (the leading brand) and £26.75 for its own brand. It will be available in all 2,500 of Boots’ UK stores by the beginning of October.

However, she continued, “We are extremely saddened that Boots feels the need to resort to legal warnings against a charity representing the concerns of women in the process.” The chain has sent two legal warnings to BPAS since August, accusing the organisation of harassing senior executives after the charity named individuals on a template letter of complaint to Boots, accessed by individual campaigners.

The price for the drug remains higher than at Superdrug, Morrisons, Tesco and Asda – each of which charge £13.50.

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Climateethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

Climate justice motion passed by TUCHailed as ‘big news’ by the divestment movement, a motion was passed at the 2017 Trades Union Congress (TUC), which calls on the TUC – the body representing the UK’s trade unions – to address the climate crisis and work for a just transition.

The motion1 was proposed by the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, with support from the Communication Workers Union, Fire Brigades Union, ASLEF and TSSA among others. It includes calls to democratise the UK’s energy system; support a ‘just’ transition to a low carbon economy, and support fossil fuel divestment and alternative reinvestment into a sustainable economy.

Martin Mayer from UNITE commented that “today British trade unions for the first time agreed a visionary strategy to combat climate change. That must mean taking back control of our privatised energy and a serious call for a just transition to protect jobs.”

Art Not Oil month of actionsSeptember saw a series of ‘rebel exhibitions’, performances and research publications in protest against oil sponsorship of cultural institutions in the UK and Europe.

Highlights included:

Three performers from campaign group BP or not BP? attended a press launch of a new BP-branded Scythians (warriors of ancient Siberia) exhibition in the British Museum. The performers took spoof banners pretended to be BP “Brand Enforcement Ambassadors” and talked to journalists about “the ‘real reasons’ behind BP’s sponsorship of the exhibition: to distract from the company’s polluting practices and to support its efforts to drill in the Russian Arctic.”

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References: 1 http://unionsforenergydemocracy.org/tuc-resolution-on-public-ownership-of-energy-and-climate-change

To coincide with an exhibition of nature-themed paintings, Fossil Free Culture Netherlands created an “oil-soaked, dried-up, burnt-down forest inside the Shell-sponsored Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.”

BP or not BP? set up a portrait of Benny Wenda – a West Papuan Independence leader – in the National Portrait Gallery. This ‘rebel exhibit’ aimed to highlight BP’s work in countries governed by regimes that violate human rights. In a similar vein, Culture Unstained published a letter in the Guardian that accused the National Portrait Gallery of breaking its own Ethical Sponsorship Policy through its partnership with BP – due to the oil companies close ties with oppressive regimes.

An ‘oil spill’ was released in the fountain beside the glass pyramid of le Louvre in Paris. It was created by Libérons le Louvre in protest against Total’s sponsorship of the gallery.

To find out more see gofossilfree.org/uk/media

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Campaign for offshore windA coalition of companies and civil society organisations including Dong Energy, SSE, Greenpeace, WWF and the Marine Conservation Society, have launched a new campaign promoting offshore wind as the future for UK energy.

Scottish actor and director, Peter Capaldi, launched the campaign in a Westminster tube station. It was hoped that passing ministers and MPs would notice the large images of wind turbines and messages plastering the station’s walls and ticket gates – that offshore wind is a great future energy option for the UK.

Peter commented: “Great Britain is the world leader in a technology which can generate huge amounts of energy without using any fuel. It’s safe, secure, zero-carbon and economical. In fact it’s halved in price in just under two years. That’s 50% off. It’s a great deal. And it may just save the planet. The future of energy in the UK is offshore wind power.”

New offshore wind is not only renewable but is now claimed to be cheaper than new gas and nuclear. It also offers an opportunity to create jobs in the ports and seaside towns around the UK’s coast that have suffered from high unemployment. What’s not to like?

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MilkNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

ProductGUIDE

Dairy milkHow much does a pint of milk really cost? Anna Clayton explores the answer to this question and looks for ethical alternatives in this stretched and dirty industry.

In this guide to dairy milk we discuss the key ‘symptoms’ of the dairy crisis, we present ways for challenging the

status quo and review the policies and practice underlying 30 UK milk brands.

Milk is a staple for most people in the UK and yet, for some time now, the milk industry has been in crisis with many key stakeholders losing out: farmers, animals and the environment. This is perhaps symbolised by the two-thirds of dairy farmers that have gone out of business over the past 20 years and the fact that we continue to lose, on average, one farmer per week at a time when the UK runs at a dairy trade deficit (in 2016, we imported £1.3 billion more in dairy products than we exported.)1

Needless to say, large farms, milk processors and supermarkets appear best set to survive these challenges and the further uncertainties posed by Brexit negotiations, “enjoying economies of scale and investing millions of pounds in hyper-efficient systems”.2 In 2016, supermarket own-label brands represented 73% of the milk market by value and 81% by volume.3

Milk WarsIn June 2017, the UK average farm-gate milk price was 26.75p per litre compared

to an average of 32p per litre for the cost of production for a high-standard conventional dairy farm.4

In response to these unfair prices, a number of protests and actions against supermarkets and dairy processors have occurred over the years, with milk buyers being accused of forcing further price cuts on farmers when liquid milk prices were already below the cost of production. For example, in August 2015, dairy farmers called for a boycott of Morrison’s, Aldi, Lidl and Asda as milk processors cut prices further. Protests and direct actions involving ‘trolley dashes’ and live cows were held outside supermarket distribution centres and in stores – attracting media attention.5

“Many shoppers see milk price cuts as disadvantaging farmers and are consequently prepared to boycott milk from a supermarket seen to be undertaking these,” reads a 2016 Mintel market report on the dairy industry.

This raised public concern over farmers’ pay and appears to have encouraged an industry response, with some companies treatment of farmers.

Morrisons and Arla have launched farmers’ milk ranges over the last couple of years, with products detailing how many pence-per-bottle goes to the farmer.

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MilkNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

ProductGUIDE

The Free Range Dairy Network launched a ‘Free Range Dairy Farmers Milk’ range at Asda in March 2017 and The Free Range Marketing Board launched the ‘Enjoy Milk’ brand in January 2017. ‘Enjoy Milk’ costs 25% more than the average supermarket own-brand milk, with the extra money going to farmers. Of the supermarkets, Marks and Spencer, Waitrose, Tesco, Co-op and Sainsbury’s are reported to have dedicated suppliers who are paid the cost of production – 32.41p per litre.6

The rise of the mega-dairyMega-dairies present themselves as one controversial technique for surviving low milk prices. In 2015, there were approximately 20 American-style factory dairies in the UK which kept herds of 700+ cows inside all year round, and 50 smaller ‘confinement units’ where animals were fed from troughs rather than in open fields.7 More recent data could not be found.

Mega-dairies have long been criticised by campaign groups for leading us further down the path of dairy intensification and, in doing so, pushing even more

traditional and small-scale farms out of business. Their animal welfare standards are criticised and they present an environmental pollution risk through handling concentrated slurry.8 In June 2017, for example, an 1800-cow operation in Wales was fined £45,000 for the contamination of the local waterway.9

Compassion in World Farming continues to run a campaign against mega-dairies following its success in halting plans for a 3,700-cow zero-grazing farm in Lincolnshire by Nocton Dairies in February 2011.

For advice on stopping a mega-dairy planning application near you, see www.ciwf.org.uk/our-campaigns/dairy/opposing-planning-applications

Environmental impact

Climate change

Globally, dairy production accounted for 2.8 percent of all man-made climate-warming gases in 2005 (the last reliable set of stats)22 and this figure is likely to rise as demand from China and India is on the increase.

The main greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted from dairy farming are methane and nitrous oxide. Methane is produced in the rumen (one of a cow’s four stomachs) and is released mainly through burping. Nitrous Oxide (N2O) is emitted when urine, faeces and fertilisers are broken down by microbes in the soil. Methane is 30 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, while nitrous oxide is almost 300 times as potent.23

Additional GHG emissions come from feed production, milk processing and transportation.

Slurry

A long-term trend of increasing pollution incidents from farming has been identified by the Environmental Agency, with slurry from dairy farms being a common offender.

A Bureau of Investigative Journalism report claims that 424 ‘serious pollution incidents’ were recorded from pig, poultry and dairy farms between 2010 and 2016, having a potentially major impact on the environment.10 Its “Dirty Business: the livestock farms polluting the UK” report describes some farmers acting as ‘repeat offenders’ and treating the pollution fines they receive as part of routine running costs. What’s more, some of the farms linked to serious pollution incidents or poor environmental management received millions of pounds in government subsidies in 2015 and 2016.

Incidents were reported to be commonly caused from the “storage, handling and spreading of waste”, due to “lack of investment in infrastructure” or “inadequate planning and management of these substances”.

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and The Co-op were supplied by companies operating farms linked to serious incidents and two other incidents were linked to an intensive farm – Pawton Dairy – that supplies Arla Foods, who in turn supplies The Co-op.11 All companies mentioned in the report lose half a mark under Ethical Consumer’s Pollution and Toxics category, as do other companies linked to pollution incidences.

Animal welfareDairy farming has inherent animal welfare issues that boil down to the simple fact that, if you want a continuous supply of

Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare‘The Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare’ annual report assesses company approaches to farm animal welfare on the basis of their published information in five core areas: Management Commitment and Policy; Governance and Management; Leadership and Innovation; Performance Reporting; and Performance Impact. By reviewing this information on an annual basis BBFAW aims to improve corporate reporting, practice and performance on farm animal welfare management over time.

The 2016 report reviewed 99 companies and ranked companies on a scale from Tier 1 (indicating companies that have taken a leadership position) down to Tier 6 (where animal welfare does not appear to be on the business agenda). All companies rated Tier 2-6 lost half a mark under our Animal Rights category.

Milk brands included in the 2016 report:

Waitrose and Marks & Spencer were rated as Tier 1. The Co-op and Tesco were rated as Tier 2. Arla, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Wal-Mart were Tier 3.Aldi Süd and Lidl were ranked Tier 4 and were considered to be making progress on implementation. The Muller Group and Groupe Lactalis were rated Tier 6.

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2016 REPORT

DETAILED RESULTSCHAPTER 4

33 2016 REPORT

Image Credit: Istock

The Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare

2016 ReportNicky Amos and Dr Rory Sullivan

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Environment Animals People Politics +ve

BRAND COMPANY GROUP

Calon Wen [O] 15 H e 1 Calon Wen Org Milk Co-op

Daylesford [O] 13.5 H H h e 1 Bholdings

Yeo Valley [O] 12.5 H h H H e 1 Yeo Valley Group

Moo Milk [O] 10.5 H H H H h 1 Crediton Dairies

Graham’s [O] 10 H h H H H h 1 Grahams the Family Dairy Grp

Bowland Milk 9.5 H H H H h Connect Plus

Dairy Pride 9.5 H H H H h Crediton Dairies

Freshways 9.5 H H H H h Nijjar Group Holdings

Cymru, Watsons 9 H h H H H h Medina Holdings

Delamere 9 H H H h H h Delamere Dairy Holdings

Graham’s 9 H h H H H h Grahams the Family Dairy Grp

Arla Organic Free Range [O] 8.5 h h H H h H h H H E 1 Arla Foods amba

Dale Farm 8.5 H h h H H h H h E United Dairy Farmers

Waitrose Duchy Organic [O] 8.5 h H h H h h H h H h h e 1 John Lewis/ Prince’s Charities Fd

St Helens Goat Milk 8.5 H H H H H h Kavli Trust

Arla, Cravendale, Lactofree 7.5 h h H H h H h H H E Arla Foods amba

Muller, Puriti, the One 7.5 H H H H H h H Utm Finance

Co-op [O] 6 h h h h h H H H H H h H h E 1 Co-operative Group

Marks & Spencer [O] 6 h H h h H H H H h h h H 1 Marks & Spencer Group

Co-op 5 h h h h h H H H H H h H h E Co-operative Group

Marks & Spencer 5 h H h h H H H H h h h H Marks & Spencer Group

Waitrose 5 h h H H h H H H H H h h E John Lewis Partnership Trust Ltd

Aldi 4.5 h H H h H H H H H h h h Aldi Sud/Carolus Stiftung

Booths 4 H h H H H H H H H H h EH Booth & Co Ltd

Morrisons [O] 3.5 h H H h h H H H H H h H h h h 1 Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc

Sainsbury’s [O] 3.5 h H H h h h H H H H h H H h h 1 J Sainsbury

Rachel’s Organic [O] 3 H H H h H H H H H h h h H H 1 JEMA 1/Nestlé SA

Morrisons 2.5 h H H h h H H H H H h H h h h Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc

Sainsbury’s 2.5 h H H h h h H H H H h H H h h J Sainsbury

Tesco [O] 2.5 h H H H h h H H H H H H H H 1 Tesco plc

Tesco 1.5 h H H H h h H H H H H H H H Tesco plc

Lidl 1.5 h h H H h H H H h H H h h H h H Schwarz Beteiligungs

Asda [O] 0.5 h H H H h H H H H H h H H H H H 1 Wal-Mart Stores Inc

Asda 0 h H H H h H H H H H h H H H H H Wal-Mart Stores Inc

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USING THE TABLESPositive ratings (+ve):

• Company Ethos:

e = full mark,

E = half mark.

• Product Sustainability: Maximum of five positive marks.

[O] = Organic Certified See all the research behind these ratings on www.ethicalconsumer.org. For definitions of all the categories go to www.ethicalconsumer.org/subscriberarea

USING THE TABLESEthiscore: the higher the score, the better the company across the criticism categories.

H = worst rating,

h = middle rating, empty = best rating (no criticisms).

milk, you need to keep female cows in a perpetual cycle of pregnancy and birth to encourage lactation.

This results in cows being impregnated every year and newborn calves being removed shortly after birth. Male calves don’t have a role in this dairy system and

so are often sent for slaughter for veal, or raised for beef, or shot. Female calves are raised for milk production.

To enable a constant supply of milk, female cows are artificially inseminated two to three months after giving birth and therefore produce milk whilst raising a

calf inside. This inevitably takes its toll, and many cows are slaughtered in the UK, physically exhausted, shortly after their fifth birthday. If a cow produces less milk, becomes infertile or becomes ill or injured they may also be slaughtered for cheap beef.

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The minimum weaning age for calves is 12 weeks.The routine use of antibiotics is prohibited.Artificial pesticides cannot be used on the land.No use of GM feed.

Pasture for Life, www.pastureforlife.org, ensures that dairy products have come from animals that “have eaten nothing but their mother’s milk and fresh grass or conserved pasture throughout their lives.” It prohibits the use of soya as an animal feed. See also page 15.

Pasture Promise – There are currently no laws in place to define free-range milk production, but the Free Range Dairy network asks its farmers to commit to grazing their cows outside for 180 days and nights a year. In June 2017, 43 Co-op stores across Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Worcester and Oxfordshire were stocking Free Range Dairy Pasture Promise milk. Other stockists around the UK can be found at www.freerangedairy.org/free-range-dairy-case-studies

The Red Tractor Standard on products essentially means that the milk was produced on a UK farm which met the national Assured

Food Standards – simply the UK legal minimum.

RSPCA Assured milk guarantees little more than legal minimum standards for cows. For example, outdoor grazing is encouraged but not compulsory; calves may

be taken away from mothers shortly after birth; and the fate of male calves is not currently tackled by this scheme.14

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No milk brand is eligible for our Best Buy label because of the inherent animal

rights issues connected to dairy farming.

See our guide to plant milks on page 19 for Best Buy alternatives.

ethic

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nsumer.orgBES T BUY

We recommend that you seek out local, small-scale, organic and/or free-range milk providers that sell direct to consumers. This map will help you find places to buy milk direct from farms: www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/map-where-to-buy-milk-direct-from-farm.htm

For other dairy milk alternatives, see Jyoti Fernandes’ article – page 15.

Of the more widely available brands, organic milk currently offers the best environmental and animal welfare standards available.

The following organic brands score well on the table: Calon Wen (in Wales and the border counties), Daylesford (buy online at daylesford.com), Yeo Valley (in supermarkets across the country), Moo Milk (in supermarkets across the country), Graham’s (throughout Scotland).

RECOMMENDED

References: 1 http://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6eRd6MaabyucmdySjBLaTRScjQ/view 2 http://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6eRd6MaabyucmdySjBLaTRScjQ/view 3 Added value in dairy drinks, milk and cream. UK May 2017, Mintel 4 www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/633089/milkprices-statsnotice-27jul17.pdf 5 www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/06/dairy-farmers-call-for-supermarkets-boycott-as-milk-price-falls 6 http://farmersforaction.org/consumer-information 7 www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/plummeting-milk-price-prompts-rise-of-2000-cow-mega-dairies-in-britain-a6744501.html 8 http://stopit.org.uk/megadairies 9 www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-40205694 10 www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-08-21/farming-pollution-fish-uk 11 www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2017-08-21/farming-pollution-fish-uk 12 www.whitelies.org.uk/animal-welfare/dairy-farming-basics 13 www.daera-ni.gov.uk/articles/organic-milk-production 14 https://science.rspca.org.uk/sciencegroup/farmanimals/standards 15 soyscorecard.panda.org/check-the-scores/dairy-manufacturers-processed-foods-companies 16 www.viva.org.uk/what-we-do/about-us/media-centre/media-releases/love-squirrels-then-boycott-duchy-originals 17 www.grahamsfamilydairy.com/news-events/news/grahams-family-dairy-announces-deal-brakes-scotland 18 www.uk.coop/directory/bowland-fresh 19 www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/30/another-1000-badgers-to-be-killed-somerset-gloucestershire-supplementary-culls 20 www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/643608/bovine-tb-2017-badger-control-minmax.pdf 21 www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/11/huge-increase-badger-culling-see-up-to-33500-animals-shot 22 www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/business/energy-environment/how-growth-in-dairy-is-affecting-the-environment 23 Understanding greenhouse gas emissions - US EPA

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To ensure high yields, cows have been selectively bred for dairy farming and can now produce six to ten times (20-45 litres) what they naturally would for a calf. This can have health implications which include difficulties in moving, and calcium deficiencies which may lead to ‘milk fever’.12 When coupled with reduced pasture time or zero grazing (no time outdoors), it’s not surprising that dairy cows commonly suffer from Mastitis (an infection of the udder) and lameness (a foot infection).

Because of these inherent issues all companies offering dairy products are marked down under Ethical Consumer’s Animal Rights category – as highlighted in the score table opposite.

Where we differentiate between best animal welfare practice is under the Factory Farming, Product Sustainability, and Company Ethos categories.

If a company offers only Organic or Free-Range milk it will not be marked down under the Factory Farming category and will gain a positive Company Ethos mark. This includes Calon Wen, Daylesford and Yeo Valley.

If a company offers an organic product (look for the [O] on the score table), it will gain a positive Product Sustainability mark.

Welfare assurance schemesConcern around animal welfare issues has led to a number of welfare assurance schemes emerging in the UK.

Organic standards for milk can vary between different certification bodies but common requirements include:

Cows should be grazed outside for most of the year (however no guaranteed minimum number of days is specified).13

Cows should be allowed a minimum space of six metres squared per animal.

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The companies behind the brandsArla supplies the UK with 25% of its milk and, although it claims to be the world’s largest producer of organic dairy products, it only released it first branded organic milk product in the UK in 2016. The company is co-operatively owned by more than 12,700 farmers across Europe and therefore receives a positive Company Ethos mark.

As the Controversial Technology column in the score table highlights, most companies lose at least half a mark under that category for the likely use of animal feed containing GM soya. Arla has made some progress in this area, stating: “All soy fed to cows at Arla farms is either organic, ProTerra-certified, RTRS-certified or covered by RTRS certificates.” WWF also placed Arla as a Frontrunner in their latest soy score card ranking.15 However, RTRS certification does not exclude GM soya (see page 16).

Rachel’s Dairy is owned by Lactalis Nestlé Chilled Dairy – a joint venture between Nestlé and Lactalis. As a result, Rachel’s Dairy is now listed on the Baby Milk Action (BMA) group website, www.babymilkaction.org, as a brand to boycott.

A boycott of Duchy Originals products is ongoing. Campaign groups Viva! and Animal Aid called for the boycott in 2010 over Prince Charles’ (the founder of Duchy Originals) call for a cull of grey squirrels in Cornwall. Animal Aid and Viva! believed that the Prince’s campaign

to eradicate grey squirrels – through poisoning, shooting or bludgeoning them to death in a sack – was “irrational, inhumane and doomed to fail”, and called for everyone who opposed animal cruelty to boycott the Prince’s Duchy Originals range of products in protest.16

Marks and Spencer became the first major retailer to sell RSPCA Assured fresh milk in September, with all of its milk coming from RSPCA assured farms which will be assessed annually. However, as discussed on page 12, this standard guarantees little more than legal minimum animal welfare standards for dairy cows and their calves.

St Helens and Delamere both sell goat’s milk and appear to practice zero grazing, with the companies describing their animals being kept in barns.

Delamere was the focus of a Viva! Investigation in March 2012 called ‘The Kids are Not Alright’ which accused Upper Enson Farm, a supplier of goat’s milk to Delamere Dairy, of animal cruelty. The investigation of the farm found:

A skip overflowing with corpses and dead goats strewn around the farm.

Baby billy goats being castrated using a method that the UK Government’s Farm Animal Welfare Council described as causing “pain and distress” and had urged that it not be used. If used, pain relief should be given, however Viva! saw no evidence of pain relief being given to the billy goats.

Kids being disbudded by having their horn buds burnt out – a process that has again been

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Badger Action NewsDespite widespread opposition from both scientists and the general public to badger culling as a control method for the spread of bovine tuberculosis in cattle, “almost 15,000 badgers have been culled since 2013” and the 2017 cull is set to go ahead on an even larger scale.19

Licences have been granted for continued culls in West Somerset, West Gloucestershire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Herefordshire. New licences have been granted in the counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, Cheshire and Wiltshire. All in all, culling will take place in 21 areas this autumn and could see as many as 33,841 badgers unnecessarily killed.20 The original pilot culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset were deemed ineffective and inhumane by the government’s independent expert panel.21

A number of historical boycotts had been called by campaign groups of both the milk industry as a whole and of milk brands that are supplied by farms within the cull zones. The rationale behind these calls was based on the notion that dairy farmers and the problems they have experienced with bovine TB were the key drivers of the cull.

Encouraging consumers and retailers to apply economic pressure on dairy and/or beef farmers was therefore deemed the natural focus for a badger-friendly boycott campaign.

However, it is proving difficult to implement a badger-friendly milk boycott due to the complexity of milk supply chains, and the rolling out of the cull will make this even more difficult (unless the whole milk industry is boycotted). In addition, there is little differentiation between companies. No company statements on sourcing from the cull zones were found during research for this milk guide.

Avoiding milk altogether, or sourcing from regional milk suppliers outside of the cull zones is the only way to guarantee that milk has not been sourced from a farm involved in the badger cull. Of the companies covered in this guide, this includes Calon Wen, Bowland, and Grahams Dairy.

To keep up to date with the campaign against the badger cull, and to explore alternatives for managing bovine TB see badgeractionnews.org

described as “painful and stressful” by the Government’s Farm Animal Welfare Council. The Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 requires that it be undertaken by a veterinary surgeon, recommending it be done under general anaesthesia which was not the case at Upper Enson Farm.

2016 was a big year for Graham’s The Family Dairy, with it becoming the exclusive supplier of milk to all Starbucks stores in Scotland and signing a deal with Brakes Scotland to supply to over 6,000 Brakes customers across Scotland.17 The company publishes very little public information about its policies and practices and therefore receives a worst rating for its Environmental and Supply Chain Management reporting.

Arla, Connect Plus, Dale Farm, The Co-op and John Lewis all present different models for collaborative and co-operative working. Connect Plus and its Bowland Fresh brand are described by Co-ops UK as being “a real success story for the collaboration of local farmers. Since its establishment twelve years ago, the company today buys milk from 25 dairy farms within the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, and has five major outlets for its liquid milk including ASDA and Booths.”18

References: See page 13.

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Sustainable feed

To encompass concerns about the sustainability of imported feed, many producers choose to feed their cows on grass and Lucerne (a type of alfalfa). The Pasture Fed Livestock Association, www.pastureforlife.org, has a list of suppliers who feed their animals entirely on feed – mostly grass – from the UK.

Small scale, high standardsThese creative farmers push the boundaries for the most ethical milk available but, in reality, most small-scale family dairy farms have very high standards for their animals. Almost all of the small-scale dairy farmers I know care deeply about their cows. Small-scale dairy farms need reliable support from ‘consumers who care’ to stay viable.

More than consumptionBeyond supporting better choices with your consumer power, you can also support campaigns for better government policy on dairy. Both consumers and farmers need to resist our government policy to create more intensive mega-dairies and globalise the dairy industry.

You can join the LWA as a supporter member for example landworkersalliance.org.uk/2017/05/become-a-supporter-of-the-lwa.Farmers for Action have been campaigning for the dairy processors and supermarkets to pay them a fair price for their milk, so they don’t have to get themselves into this race to the bottom (as discussed on page 10).

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Small-scale dairy farmers

Milk is a very special liquid, requiring an abundance of land, the hard work of farmers and the generosity of cows to produce it. Yet so many consumers expect it to be cheaper than a pint of beer or even a bottle of water.

Consumer demand for cheap milk has resulted in a need for economies of scale in the dairy industry that has driven the ethics of dairy production down. The governments’ relentless push for the dairy sector to enter the global market propels farmers into competition, with animals reared to lower standards in order to keep prices down. This means that herds get bigger, milkers get more stressed out, and cows are bred to produce far beyond a level that is healthy and stress free for them.

Cheap prices also mean that farms can’t afford to hire more employees to help out, so farmers are tired and stretched in their capacity to look after their animals, which of course, has an effect on animal welfare.

I am a small-scale dairy farmer based in Dorset and work for the Landworkers’ Alliance (LWA) – a union of small-scale producers and family farmers. I’ve been keeping cows for the last 15 years so that my family and local customers can have milk and cheese that we feel happy about. I did not want to become a vegan because I love milk and also believe that cows and goats play an important role in maintaining our pastoral grassland ecosystems and beautiful, productive countryside. I earn money from my cows by making higher-value products like cheese and yoghurt to sell.

Along with other farmers who care deeply about our animals and the land, we believe that the whole dairy system needs urgent reform to allow everyone to have access to more humane and sustainable choices about their milk.

Sustainable systemsThere are many other ‘alternative’ dairy farmers, like myself, who get a fair price for milk by selling directly to the consumer using a wide variety of production methods designed to create systems that work in co-operation with animals, nature and wider sustainability issues.

Vegetarian farms

The Ahimsa Dairy Foundation, www.ahimsamilk.org, sell milk from a system where no animals are slaughtered. All dairy production comes from animals who need to have a calf or a kid to start lactation, but the Ahimsa milk producers keep all of their calves and raise the males for training for work and the females as future milk producers.

Keeping the females

Some producers choose to leave the calves with their mothers until they are slowly weaned, then send the male calves or kids off for meat, while keeping the females. An amazing dairy using this system is The Calf at Foot dairy: www.the-calf-at-foot-dairy.co.uk

Direct delivery

Some farms, like North Aston Dairy, northastondairy.blogspot.co.uk, deliver their milk straight to the doorstep, so are able to ensure a fair price for their milk which covers the costs of maintaining high welfare. There are some Community Supported Farms, like Chagfarm, www.chagfarm.org, that also work directly with local communities, sharing the economic risks of producing their high-welfare goat milk.

Jyoti Fernandes from the Landworkers’ Alliance discusses alternative dairy farmers in the UK and the urgent need for dairy reform.

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Plant milkNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

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Plant milks Anna Clayton explores the alternatives to dairy milk.

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Finding alternatives to animal milk has never been so easy. A wide range of plant milks are now available

in both supermarkets and wholefood shops, with almond and coconut milk experiencing the biggest growth in popularity in 2016. Soya, almond, coconut, hazelnut, oat, cashew, rice, hemp, quinoa and various combinations are just some of the options you can now choose from. We list who makes what in the table on page 20.

The ethics of milk Plant derived milks may be an important vegan alternative to dairy milks but are they sustainable? This question is hard to answer as there is little reliable information on the environmental and social impacts different plant milks have compared to dairy, let alone a comparative study of the environmental and social impacts of different plant milks. We summarise the key ethical issues that have been raised for four widely available milks: soya, coconut, almond and rice.

SoyaThe issues

Soya has faced criticism for many years over its role in deforesting the Amazon and converting more land for GM production globally. However, soya milk drinkers have never been the leading cause of these issues – most of the world’s soya is fed to animals; only 6% of it is eaten or drank directly by people.

As highlighted in our Soya article in Issue 160 of Ethical Consumer, if grown well, soya could be an environmentalist’s best friend. It can produce more protein per land area than any other major crop. It is reported to use approximately 28% of the amount of water used for dairy production;4 it can be grown on former pasture or abandoned land without cutting a single tree down; and it is nutritionally most similar to cows milk compared to other plant milk options.5

The key challenge is ensuring that soya is produced in a way that realises its environmental credentials.

The Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) and ProTerra

We have, therefore, looked into the soya and GM policies of all plant milk brands to help highlight those using ‘sustainable’ soya. In doing so, two key schemes are often referred to: the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) and ProTerra-certified.

Both schemes have faced criticism from campaign groups as they only demand that soya production meets basic environmental and labour standards, and neither address soya’s indirect impacts (cattle ranchers selling their land to soya farmers and moving into virgin forest themselves, for example).

The key difference between the two schemes is that ProTerra ensures that no GM is used, and when you buy ProTerra certified soya, it is guaranteed to be the same soya that received the certification. In contrast, the RTRS does not exclude GM

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Milk or M*lkSince 2010 the Food Standards Agency in the UK

has had rules in place that state that only liquid from an animal can be called ‘milk’.1 Despite this, the term

‘milk’ is still often used interchangeably in marketing with some retailers having ‘milk alternative’ sections and price labels have been found to refer to milk even if packaging

doesn’t. Websites of both retailers and some manufacturers are reported to use the term ‘milk’ for both animal and

plant varieties and the issue has been craftily avoided by using some of the following: m*lk, mylk or even malk. Complaints from farmers and key dairy stakeholders

such as The National Farmers Union2 have resulted in an EU court reminder that only animal secretions

can be referred to as milk.3 It’s now up to local authorities and trading standards to

enforce this rule. Watch this space.

soya6 and allows some certification credits to be bought and sold separately from the soya that received the certification.

Recommendations

Avoiding soya sourced from South America, and seeking out certified organic soya are the best options for ethically minded consumers. Of the Best Buys, Plamil and The Bridge both meet these standards. The organic soya milks offered by Sunrise and Sojade are also made from organic beans sourced outside of South America.

See page 20 for information on companies’ soya sourcing policies.

CoconutThe issues

Coconuts are commonly grown without the use of pesticides, and can be sourced from existing coconut groves. However, as discussed previously in Ethical Consumer magazine (Issues 156 and 160), the rise in popularity of coconuts does not necessarily go hand-in-hand with improving wages and workers’ rights. Increasing demand may lead to plantation expansion and the creation of new coconut groves – potentially at the detriment to pristine habitat.7

Nora Pittenger from Fair Trade USA names the following as the main ethical issues with coconut production currently:

Extreme Poverty: coconut farmers are the poorest of the poor in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines, threatening the sustainability of coconut farming as a livelihood.Unfavourable prices: given that small plots of land are farmed, coconut farmers average about one dollar a day throughout the year.Low yields and productivity: particularly as coconut trees age, their inefficiency makes the cost of maintaining and harvesting coconuts high.Mono-crop farming: coconut is mainly grown as a mono-crop, fostering an environment of low crop diversity that can be detrimental to the environment and risky for farmers.

Recommendations

Because of low wages in this sector, and considering there are currently no fairly traded coconut milks available, we would recommend avoiding coconut milks until such an option is available.

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A lack of fair trade coconut milks may be due to the market growing quickly, or the historical roots and focus of the fair trade movement on cocoa, coffee and tea. Either way, there is a clear need for pressure to be put on companies to ensure coconut producers are being paid a fair wage.

For more information on this issue see fairtradeusa.org/blog/power-of-coconut

AlmondThe issues

To make 4.5 litres of almond milk requires approximately 4,182 litres of water8 – more than other plant milks. When this is placed in context of a rising demand for almond milk, and with more than 80% of the world’s almonds coming from drought-stricken California, almond’s ethical credentials become questionable. Over-pumping of aquifers to irrigate almond plantations is reported to have caused land subsidence in California, potentially threatening infrastructure such as roads, bridges etc.9

In addition, overworking honey bees in California’s almond groves was highlighted in Markus Imhoof ’s film ‘More Than Honey’.10 Approximately 1.6 million beehives are said to be brought into California each year to support pollination, and as the area is “dripping with insecticides” a lot of bees have suffered.11 Tom Philpott reports that “during the 2014 California almond bloom, between 15% and 25% of beehives suffered “severe” damage, ranging from complete hive collapse to dead and deformed brood.”12

Recommendations

For the reasons listed above, only organic almond milk should be sought and drunk in moderation.

The Bridge (a Best Buy), Rude Health and EcoMil offer organic almond milk. Dream also has an organic almond/ hazelnut milk.

RiceThe issues

It takes about 554.6 litres of water to grow the rice needed to make 4.5 litres of rice milk.13 In addition, rice paddies globally are responsible for more than 1.2% of total global greenhouse gas emissions and at least 10% of agricultural emissions.14 Ethical Consumer’s guide to rice in Issue 160 advised reducing our intake of rice and replacing it with more local and lower-carbon staples.

Recommendations

Because of the above issues, we advise avoiding rice milk.

Which milk is best of them all?As no independent academic studies have been conducted that directly compare the environmental and social impacts of all the different plant milks, including oat and hemp milk, it is hard to provide a clear answer to this question. Until such a study arises, responding to the issues raised by campaign groups seems the best way forward. Going with the recommendations above and looking for other organic milks is one way to navigate the ethical issues.

For example, The Bridge (Best Buy) offers a range of organic milks, including oat, quinoa, buckwheat, spelt and kamut.

To find out who sells what milk see the table on page 20.

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Environment Animals People Politics +ve

BRAND COMPANY GROUP

Plamil [O][Vg] 16.5 e 1.5 Plamil Foods Ltd

The Bridge [O][Vg] 16.5 e 1.5 The Bridge SRL

Good Hemp [Vg] 16 e 1 Braham & Murray

EcoMil [O][Vg] 15 H h e 1.5 Nutriops SL

Oatly [O][Vg] 15 H H e 2 Cereal Base Ceba AB

Sunrise [O][Vg] 14.5 H 1.5 Tribeca May Ltd

Oatly [Vg] 14 H H e 1 Cereal Base Ceba AB

Rude Health [O] 13.5 H 0.5 Rude Health Foods Ltd

Sunrise [Vg] 13.5 H 0.5 Tribeca May Ltd

Granovita [O] 13 H H 1 Dr A. Stoffel Holding AG

Isola Bio [O][Vg] 13 H h 1.5 Royal Wessanen

Rude Health 13 H Rude Health Foods Ltd

Koko [Vg] 12 H H H 1 First Grade Int./The Sambu Grp

Sojade [O] 10.5 H H H H h 1 Triballat Noyal

Sojasun 9.5 H H H H h Triballat Noyal

Rice Dream [O][Vg] 8 H h h H H h h H h H 1.5 Hain Celestial Group Inc

Dream [Vg] 7 H h h H H h h H h H 0.5 Hain Celestial Group Inc

Co-op [O] 6 h h h h h H H H H H h H h E 1 Co-operative Group

Alpro [O][Vg] 5 H h h H H H H h H H h H H 2 Groupe Danone

Co-op 5 h h h h h H H H H H h H h E Co-operative Group

Marks & Spencer 5 h H h h H H H H h h h H Marks & Spencer Group

Provamel [O][Vg] 5 H h h H H H H h H H h H H 2 Groupe Danone

Waitrose 5 h h H H h H H H H H h h E John Lewis Partnership Trust Ltd

Aldi Actileaf 4.5 h H H h H H H H H h h h Aldi Sud/Carolus Stiftung

Alpro [Vg] 4 H h h H H H H h H H h H H 1 Groupe Danone

Holland & Barrett [O][Vg] 4 H H H H H H h H H h H H 1 Carlyle Group

Morrisons [O] 3.5 h H H h h H H H H H h H h h h 1 Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc

Soya Soleil [Vg] 3.5 H h h H H H H h H H h H H 0.5 Groupe Danone

Morrisons 2.5 h H H h h H H H H H h H h h h Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc

Sainsbury’s 2.5 h H H h h h H H H H h H H h h J Sainsbury

Tesco [O] 2.5 h H H H h h H H H H H H H H 1 Tesco plc

Tesco 1.5 h H H H h h H H H H H H H H Tesco plc

Asda [O] 0.5 h H H H h H H H H H h H H H H H 1 Wal-Mart Stores Inc

Asda 0 h H H H h H H H H H h H H H H H Wal-Mart Stores Inc

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USING THE TABLESPositive ratings (+ve):

• Company Ethos:

e = full mark,

E = half mark.

• Product Sustainability: Maximum of five positive marks.

[Vg] = Marketed as vegan or certified by Vegan Society. [O] = Organic. See all the research behind these ratings on www.ethicalconsumer.org. For definitions of all the categories go to www.ethicalconsumer.org/subscriberarea

USING THE TABLESEthiscore: the higher the score, the better the company across the criticism categories.

H = worst rating,

h = middle rating, empty = best rating (no criticisms).

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Best Buy brands for plant milks are: Plamil, The Bridge and Good Hemp as

they all receive our best rating for Environmental

Reporting and Supply Chain Management and are vegan companies offering vegan products.

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Table highlightsLarge companies such as the supermarkets, Holland & Barrett and Group Danone are found at the bottom of the Plant Milk score table. All offer a range of uncertified animal products alongside their vegan milk ranges, resulting in them losing full marks under the Animal Rights and Factory Farming categories.

The smaller vegan and vegetarian companies float to the top of the Plant Milk ratings, with Plamil Foods and The Bridge coming out top. Buying vegan milk from these vegan companies is advised if Animal Rights are driving your purchasing choices.

The companies behind the brands Danone completed its acquisition of WhiteWave, the owner of the Alpro brand, earlier this year. In doing so, Alpro is now owned by a company that is the focus of a campaign run by Baby Milk Action (BMA) – the DanoNO campaign. BMA claims that “Danone is stepping up its targeting of health workers and the public around the world, in violation of international baby milk marketing standards”. It is calling on campaigners to expose Danone’s controversial practices.18

Regarding Animal Rights, Danone scores a worst under all relevant Ethical Consumer categories. For example, it conducts tests on animals “in order to ensure the safety and efficacy of new products” and does not provide a cut-off date for ending all animal testing.

Koko Dairy Free is a family owned company that has farmed coconuts in Eastern Sumatra, Indonesia, since 1986. The brand is owned by First Grade International – a supplier of coconut products who launched Koko Dairy Free in the UK in 2010. The company scores a worst rating under Environmental Reporting, Supply Chain Management and Palm Oil as it provides very little publicly available information about its policies and practices in these areas.

Triballat Noyal is also a family owned company that has been operating in France since the 1950s. It owns the Sojade and Sojasun brands in addition to selling a range of dairy products which include cheese and butter. The company shows a preference for organic and local sourcing, stating: “out of 100 kg of ingredients purchased, over 90 kg are

‘Made in France’ and, as of 2013, 43% of the company’s products were from organic farms.”

Hain Celestial’s brands include beauty and body care brands Jasons ‘natural’ products, Alva Botanica and Avalon Organics; and Hain Pure Protein which offers “Natural, Antibiotic Free, Vegetarian Fed, Humanely Raised poultry products.” In 2015, Hain Celestial agreed a $7.5 million settlement in order to end a consumer fraud class action lawsuit over allegations that it had falsely labelled products as organic.20

All of Oatly’s milks are vegan and meet The Vegan Society and Animal Rights Sweden standards. In 2014, Oatly was taken to court by Sweden’s dairy lobby over its marketing slogans: “It’s like milk but made for humans” and “No milk. No soy. No badness.” The suit also objected to the lines “We are the post milk generation” and “Wow No Cow” claiming that they make milk appear to be “unfit for human consumption” and “unmodern”. Although Oatly ended up losing the lawsuit,21 media coverage around the case ended up increasing Oatly’s sales.22

Royal Wessanen is a Netherlands-based organic foods company that owns the Isola Bio brand as well as Clipper Teas, Whole Earth and Kallo. All of the company’s soy comes from Italy. The company receives a worst rating for Environmental Reporting despite being conscious of its key environmental impacts as it does not publish two quantified targets for reducing these.

Good Hemp, as its name suggests, makes a range of products from hemp. To make these products, the company mainly uses hemp seed grown in Canada as it currently cannot grow enough in the UK to keep up with the growth of the

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business. All of its products are GM free and it’s an accredited supplier in the Non-GMO Project.

Rude Health’s priorities include: sourcing organic ingredients; using as few and ‘whole’ ingredients as possible and sourcing as locally as possible – from the UK and Europe. The company does not appear to use any soya or palm oil in its products.

Sweden’s dairy lobby objected to this Oatly marketing slogan claiming that it made milk appear to be “unfit for human consumption”.

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Who sells what

Brand Milk offered Soya sourcing and GM policiesPlamil Organic soya milk. Plamil only uses organic soya beans certified by Ecocert.

The BridgeOrganic: rice, soya, oat, almond, quinoa, buckwheat, spelt, kamut.

All the Bridge’s products are certified organic and exclude the use of GM ingredients. Its soya is said to be sourced from Italy.

Good Hemp Hemp milk. No soya used.

EcoMilOrganic: almond, coconut, hazelnut, hemp, quinoa, sesame.

Nutriops sells a soya powder. “Soy used by Nutriops comes from organic farming ... The percentage of soy from organic farming is about 50%.” Soy used in the conventional line was said not to contain GMOs. A traceability system, covering the company’s whole supply chain, was used to ensure this.

OatlyOrganic and non-organic oat milk.

No soya used.

SunriseOrganic and non-organic soya milk.

Only uses European-sourced organic GMO-free soya beans.

Isola BioOrganic: Soya, millet, buckwheat, rice-hazelnut, rice-almond, rice-coconut, quinoa.

“Wessanen brand products do not contain any GMOs, GMO ingredients or ingredients derived from GMOs.”

Rude Health

Organic: almond, cashew nut, hazelnut, brown rice, oat. Non-organic coconut milk.

No soya used.

Granovita Organic soya milk. Granovita uses organic soya beans which exclude the use of GMOs.

Koko Coconut milk. No soya used.

Triballat Noyal (Sojade and Sojasun)

Sojasun soya milk.

Sojade organic: soya, rice, hemp.Sources non-GMO soya from France and its entire supply chain is certified by an independent certification body.

Dream, Rice Dream

Rice, almond, oat, coconut, spelt, cashew/rice, almond/rice. Organic: rice, almond/hazelnut.

No soya milk products are offered by DREAM. Regarding GMOs: “99% of Hain Celestial food products are made from non-GMO ingredients”.

Group Danone (Alpro, Provamel, Soya Soleil)

Alpro: almond, soya, organic soya, hazelnut, coconut, rice, oat, cashew, coconut/almond. Provamel: soya, almond, almond/rice, cashew, hazelnut, macadamia, coconut/almond, coconut/rice, rice, oat. Soya Soleil: soya milk.

Alpro sources its soya beans mainly from France. It does not use GMOs and uses a traceability system to ensure this – a system approved and monitored by independent auditors Cert ID. Danone has “adopted the global position of not using ingredients from genetically modified plants in its products ... These measures are not applied in countries such as the USA, where public concern on the subject remains limited and large-scale agricultural production of GM crops makes it difficult to obtain supplies of conventional products.”

Waitrose Soya.

Soya beans used in Waitrose’s own label soya drinks are ProTerra-Certified. Waitrose is a member of the Roundtable on Responsible Soy (RTRS) and is a supporter of the Soy Moratorium, an initiative that has successfully reduced deforestation rates in the Amazon Biome. Waitrose is committed “to ensuring all soya used as food ingredients and in the feed used by our farmers for Waitrose meat, milk, poultry, egg and farmed fish products is procured through Certified sustainable sources, including sources certified under schemes operated by the Danube Soy Association, RTRS and the ProTerra Foundation by 2020.” It was considered a ‘leader’ in WWF’s soy scorecard,15 scoring 18.5/ 24.

Aldi Soya, almond.

No soya sourcing policy could be found. Regarding GM, Aldi states: “GM ingredients and derivatives are not permitted in our own label products ... In line with EU regulations and the UK market, our policy does not prohibit the use of GM ingredients in animal feed.”

Holland & Barrett

Organic soya milk.Holland & Barrett’s website states that all its products are free from GMOs. No further information was found.

MorrisonsOrganic and non-organic soya milk.

Although Morrisons is a member of the RTRS, it scores poorly (4.5/24) in WWF’s 2016 soy scorecard, only sourcing 7% of its soy responsibly. Regarding GM it states that it does not use GMOs in any of its own brand products. However, it cannot guarantee that GM animal feed is not used in the supply chain for meat and dairy products, unless it’s organic.

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Brand Milk offered Soya sourcing and GM policies

Sainsbury’s Soya, almond, coconut.

Sainsbury’s is a member of the RTRS and the Soy Moratorium and is “committed to sourcing the soya in its own-brand products sustainably by the end of 2020.” According to WWF’s 2016 scorecard, 0% of Sainsbury’s soya was sourced responsibly. Regarding GM, Sainsbury’s does “not permit the sale of own-brand food, drink, pet food, dietary supplements or floral products that contain GM material.” Its non-organic range of meat and dairy was likely to be raised using GM animal feed.

TescoOrganic and non-organic soya milk.

Tesco is a member of the RTRS and the Soy Moratorium and is “committed to ensuring all our soy is responsibly sourced by 2020” and to helping achieve zero net deforestation by 2020. It states: “In our own supply chain in the UK, soy used as an ingredient in our own-brand products come only from non-genetically modified (GM) sources. Our internal systems track all soy-related ingredients to ensure they come from a non-GM source.” According to WWF’s soy scorecard only 3% of Tesco’s soya was responsibly sourced. Tesco does not prohibit the use of GM feed in the production of its non-organic meat, eggs and milk.

AsdaOrganic and non-organic soya milk.

Asda is a member of the RTRS and the Soy Moratorium and commits to helping achieve zero net deforestation by 2020. It has calculated its soya footprint and states that its “2015 data shows that the vast majority of soya was sourced from countries other than Brazil and hence has no impact on the Brazilian Amazon and of the soya coming from Brazil 75% of that is certified.”16 According to WWF’s 2016 soy scorecard it only sourced 11% of its soya responsibly. (No GMO policy was found).

Co-opOrganic and non-organic soya milk.

The Co-operative Food is a member of the RTRS but has a long way to go with sourcing soy sustainably (it scored 6.5/24 on WWF’s soy scorecard). The Co-op does “not allow or sell any Co-op branded GM products or ingredients.” However it “can’t guarantee that there is no GM soya in [its] animal feed because GM soya used for animal feed is grown and imported alongside non-GM soya.”

Marks & Spencer

Soya, oat, rice, coconut, multigrain milk.

M&S is a member of the Retail Soy Group and aims for “all soy used in ... products [to be] sourced from locations that don’t contribute to deforestation” by 2020. It scored 18.5/24 on WWF’s soy scorecard, and was considered ‘well on the path’ to sourcing sustainable soy.17 Regarding GM: “M&S Food is not made with genetically modified ingredients nor the use of nanotechnology.” However, “due to a lack of non-GM animal feed available to UK farmers, we, alongside other retailers, do not stipulate the use of non-GM animal feed in our fresh meat supply chain.”

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Making your ownAs many plant milk drinkers will be aware, Tetra Paks are the most common form of packaging for dairy milk alternatives. Although recyclable, the materials needed to make Tetra Paks’ layered structure paperboard (made from wood), polyethylene (a type of plastic) and aluminium – could be considered a waste of resources.

One way to reduce Tetra Pak usage is to make your own milk and store it in a reusable glass bottle. We therefore asked for your advice and experience of making your own plant milks. We list some responses below.

Caroline Whelpton

“I no longer buy commercially produced plant milks. I make my own oat milk which is creamy and goes very well in hot drinks as well as breakfast cereals. Here is the recipe. It is very easy:

Soak one cup of oats in water for at least 15 mins or overnight.Drain water.Blend oats in blender with 3 cups water, a pinch of salt and a little vanilla essence.If you want a sweetened version, add a couple of dates.Strain through a sieve (a normal sieve used for baking is fine).

And that’s it! The remaining oats can be used in pancakes, porridge, smoothies etc. So nothing is wasted. I have reduced packaging by doing this. I buy the oats in bulk and store them in a large container. I keep the finished oat milk in my fridge in a glass milk bottle-style screw top jar.”

Vic from London

“I started to adopt a zero-waste lifestyle in March this year, so purchasing tetra-packed soya milk had to stop.

I didn’t want to go down the route of

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the ‘ultra-homemaker’ and so didn’t even consider making my own soymilk as it’s quite labour intensive, but instead have switched to homemade cashew milk.

I choose cashews over other nuts mostly due to price, but also hazels and almonds have a more distinctive flavour and are not really what I want in a cup of tea ...!

I buy cashews unpackaged – there are three semi-local shops close to me where I can buy them loose by weight. Depending on the price, I switch between organic and non-organic.

I’ve followed the simple recipe I found online which makes 700 ml milk (enough to store in an old gin bottle in the fridge door): 3/4 cup cashews and just under 3 cups of water. Sometimes I add some salt but it doesn’t make much of a difference to the end taste.

Best tip I can offer – don’t soak the cashews too long: they pulverise into creamy milk with minimal residue after straining if you soak for between 3-4 hours – overnight soaking yields a granier

References: 1 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2017/jul/23/dairy-milk-court-animal-plant-nut 2 https://www.plantbasednews.org/post/plant-milk-should-not-be-called-milk-say-dairy-industry-players 3 www.fwi.co.uk/news/non-dairy-products-in-europe-banned-using-from-using-word-milk.htm 4 www.thecultureist.com/2016/10/05/why-dairy-alternatives-arent-always-good-for-you-or-the-planet 5 www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/nutritional-value-of-plant-based-milk-alternatives-soya-hemp-oat-almond-coconut_uk_58ee2724e4b0ca64d91ad750 6 www.responsiblesoy.org/contact-us/questions-and-answers/?lang=en 7 http://fairtradeusa.org/blog/power-of-coconut 8 www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/02/wheres-californias-water-going/a 9 www.motherjones.com/food/2014/07/your-almond-habit-sucking-califoirnia-dry 10 www.morethanhoneyfilm.com 11 www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2015/oct/21/almond-milk-quite-good-for-you-very-bad-for-the-planet 12 www.motherjones.com/food/2015/05/almonds-now-require-85-percent-us-beehives 13 https://www.thecultureist.com/2016/10/05/why-dairy-alternatives-arent-always-good-for-you-or-the-planet 14 www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/216137/icode 15 http://soyscorecard.panda.org/check-the-scores/filter/country/uk 16 https://sustainability.asda.com/soya 17 http://soyscorecard.panda.org/check-the-scores/retail-and-food-services-companies/marks-and-spencer 18 www.babymilkaction.org/danono 19 www.foodchainmagazine.com/2017/08/07/first-grade-international-ltd 20 https://www.bigclassaction.com/settlement/9-4m-settlement-reached-in-hain-organic-consumer.php 21 https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/8872536 22 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-14/swedish-oat-milk-producer-benefits-from-dairy-industry-lawsui

Caroline’s home made oat milk.

result with more large bits in the residue. Less is more when it comes to soaking – beans too!

I strain through a nylon nut milk bag which I think will last forever.”

Gillian Hall

“I’ve been making my own for a few years now using a Chufa milk maker. It’s a lot less hassle than making and straining through a paint straining bag which I used to do.

For nut milks the price difference is more or less nothing in comparison to buying Tetra Paks but obviously you have the pulp left over to use. For cheaper ingredients like oats or rice the milk costs more or less nothing and the costs of the Chufa milk maker is quickly recouped.

We’re a family of six vegans so we can get through a reasonable amount of plant milk so it’s not 100% of our milk consumption but it has certainly significantly reduced the amount of Tetra Paks that we get through.”

Note: homemade plant milks do not contain added vitamins like commercially produced ones. So you will need to ensure you are getting those vitamins from other sources – including a balanced and healthy diet.

This guide looks at the issues around bottled water and recommends brands to buy when you really have

to, but our Best Buy is tap water. We look at refill campaigns and refillable water bottles. We have interviewed Frank Water which stopped selling water in plastic bottles and now campaign for refillables. Plus Greenpeace tell us all about their plastics campaign which is currently targeting Coca-Cola.

What to doIn this guide, we’ll tell you:

why you should drink tap water from a reusable bottle;how to campaign for public water fountains and public refill stations;how to reduce consumption of sparkling water or make your own;why you should buy water in glass bottles if you have to buy any.

The plastic bottle problemA million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute and the number is expected to jump by another 20% by 2021, creating an environmental crisis some campaigners predict will be as serious as climate change.

The majority of plastic bottles used across the globe are for drinking water.15

Bottled water bottles are made from PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) which is made from oil, a non-renewable resource. Whilst plastic bottles are often correctly labelled as

‘recyclable’, only 57% of them are actually recycled.11 The issue is the 43% of plastic

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bottles that aren’t recycled but lie in a landfill site somewhere for the anticipated 450 years it will take them to decompose. Or they end up in the ocean.

Plastic pollution in the oceanPlastic pollution of the oceans means that microplastics are now in the food chain. By 2050, the ocean will contain more plastic by weight than fish, according to research by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. In June, scientists found nearly 18 tonnes of plastic on one of the world’s most remote islands, an uninhabited coral atoll in the South Pacific.15

Most bottled water companies are not reducing the amount of single-use bottles they use. They are focusing their efforts on ‘lightweighting’ – making PET bottles thinner to reduce costs, plastic-use and carbon emissions – or developing

Bottled water – H2 Oh ...Jane Turner looks at why we need to think outside the plastic bottle and embrace tap water, the only true eco beverage.

Why have we written a guide to bottled water?We had mixed feelings within the co-op about whether we should update our 2006 guide to bottled water, a product whose creation is a waste of energy and resources and which causes a massive plastic pollution problem.

The success of bottled water is due to excellent marketing and the convenience factor. It’s much easier to buy a bottle than to remember to fill a reusable bottle with tap water. That’s not helped by the fact that there is limited access to public water systems outside of our homes.

There is no doubt that we should stop buying bottled water. But, in the real world, try as we might to always take our own bottle of tap water with us, there are always going to be the odd occasions when we haven’t and with the current absence of public drinking water facilities a bottle of water may be a better option than a bottle of fizzy pop.

We asked you, our readers, what you thought. 37% of respondents said yes we should do a shopping guide to bottled water whilst only 15% said no. But you wanted us to promote tap water, reusable bottles and refill options.

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bioplastics which do not use oil as a source material, such as Coca-Cola’s Glaceau Smartwater which is up to 30% plant plastic. However, lightweighting and bioplastics fail to tackle the problem of ocean plastics. Lighter and bioplastic bottles still pose an ingestion and choking threat to marine life. They also still slowly break down into tiny pieces of plastic which can absorb toxic chemicals and contaminate the ocean food chain.

See the Greenpeace article on page 31 for more on the global problem of plastic pollution and their campaign to end the use of single-use plastic bottles.

Plastic in the drinking water supplyNever has it seemed more important to reduce plastic pollution than since the revelation, in September 2017, that there are microplastics in global tap water. The investigation was performed at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health for Orb Media. It sampled tap water from more than a dozen nations and found that 83% of the samples were contaminated with plastic fibres. Microfibres were also found in a few samples of commercial bottled water tested in the US. The findings have led to calls from scientists for urgent research on the implications for health.22

The investigation suggested that the obvious source was microfibres from clothes and carpets. Other sources include microbeads and plastics, including bottles, which break down into microparticles. In September 2016, the UK government announced plans to ban microbeads from cosmetics (but not all microbeads) by the end of 2018.

Current standard water treatment systems do not filter out all of the microplastics so part of the solution is to improve these systems. But we also need to tackle the problem at its source – the production and use of plastic including, of course, plastic bottles.

Read the report – https://orbmedia.org/stories/Invisibles_plastics

Water & carbon footprintA bottle of water is 1000 times more carbon intensive than its tap alternative.18 This is because of the carbon emissions which arise largely from packaging and transportation.

According to Defra,16 on average, it takes an estimated 1.53 litres of water to produce a 1 litre of bottled water. This includes the water used in the manufacturing stages and the water in the bottle. Whilst its water footprint is lower than for other soft drinks, which have additional agricultural water inputs, this is still an unsustainable way of distributing water.

Glass vs. plastic bottles All things considered, if you are going to buy a bottle of water, a glass bottle is the better option.Here’s why:

A PET bottle uses twice as much minerals and fossil fuels, 17 times more water and produces five times the greenhouse gas emissions than a glass bottle.10

The UK generally has good kerbside recycling for glass bottles. In the UK, we generally recycle around 68% of glass bottles12 and 57% of plastic bottles.11

Glass bottles have been recycled into new glass bottles for many years and they are infinitely recyclable. Plastic bottles tend to get recycled into

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This planktonic arrow worm, Sagitta setosa, has eaten a blue plastic fibre about 3mm long. Plankton support the entire marine food chain.

polyester fibre for clothing like fleeces or carpets. The lids are recycled into garden furniture, litter bins and pipes, which, in turn, are often not recycled.Glass bottles produced in the UK have an average recycled content of 30%.13 One Water’s glass bottles are 35% recycled whilst Belu’s are 45% and its green glass bottles are 80% recycled. According to Greenpeace, plastic bottles currently only have, on average, 7% recycled content. (Coca-Cola has set a goal of 50% recycled plastic content by 2020 but Belu already uses 50% recycled plastic whilst One Water uses 25%.)

Overextraction of groundwaterIn the UK, most of the bottled water we buy is sourced in Europe, mainly France and the UK. According to the European Environmental Agency, most water is used for agriculture rather than bottled water and there is generally no ‘water stress’.7

So, whilst the bottle you buy in the UK is not directly involved in overextraction, you may be supporting companies that are causing severe water shortages for communities outside of Europe.

Coca-Cola, who produce bottled Glaceau Smartwater, has been criticised in various states in India for the overextraction and pollution of groundwater. For example, Coca-Cola has been engaged in a 12-year-long legal battle at its Plachimada bottling plant in Kerala, India. Although the factory has been shut since 2004, water from the wells is still too polluted to use.

Nestlé, who produce bottled water Nestle Pure Life, has also had its fair share of criticism on this front, which is no surprise from a company that famously declared at the 2000 World Water Forum in the Netherlands that water should be defined as a need – not as a human right.17

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In 2016, it came under fire for bottling water in drought-stricken California, “It is very disturbing and actually quite offensive that a foreign company is taking our water, bottling it and selling it back to us,” said Nick Rodnam, one protester at a Los Angeles plant. California was in its fourth consecutive year of drought and residents had been instructed to cut their use.21

In 2012, the award-winning film Bottled Life documented the conflict between Nestlé and the community of Bhati Dilwan, a village in Pakistan, where local leaders and members of the community accused Nestlé of draining groundwater resources to produce its Pure Life bottled water.17

Bottled water bansPlastic water bottles have been banned in cities and public places around the world. For example, San Francisco was the first US city to ban plastic water bottles, in 2014, and now any packaged water is banned on city property.

In August, Donald Trump reversed the ban on the sale of plastic water bottles in 23 of America’s most famous national parks, such as the Grand Canyon, which had been in place for six years. The move came after lobbying by the International Bottled Water Association, whose members include Nestlé.14

Examples from the UK include London’s Borough market (pictured right) phasing out the sale of plastic bottles and introducing drinking fountains and Selfridges banning their sale in some stores. Leeds University banned bottled water in the student union bars and shops in 2008.

Deposit return schemesOrganisations led by Greenpeace and Surfers Against Sewage, are now campaigning for a plastic bottle tax (deposit return scheme) to encourage bottles to be returned and reused.

Unsurprisingly soft drinks companies like Coca-Cola are lobbying against the tax. Two-thirds of the soft drinks companies recently surveyed by Greenpeace have a global policy opposing the introduction of deposit return schemes on drinks containers, although these schemes have boosted recycling and collection rates to over 80% across the world, and to more than 98% in Germany.

In 2016, leaked internal Coca-Cola Europe documents showed how the company viewed deposit return systems

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as something they should “fight back against”. But, Coca-Cola has now decided to support the introduction of the Deposit Return System in Scotland which got the go ahead in September.

The Environmental Audit Committee is currently considering a deposit return scheme for the UK which is supported by Environment Minister Michael Gove.

See the Greenpeace article on page 31 for more details.

Take ActionGreenpeace – https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/s/bottle-deposit. Sign the petitionSurfers Against Sewage – www.sas.org.uk/messageinabottle. Sign the petition and write to your MP.

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Environment Animals People Politics +ve

BRAND COMPANY GROUP

Belu [S&R] 16 e 1 Belu Spring Water

One Water [S&R] 14 H H e 1 Global Ethics Group

Life Water [S] 12.5 H H 0.5 Life Global Holdings

SPA Reine [R] 12.5 H H 0.5 Spadel

Brecon Carreg 12 H H Spadel

Thirsty Planet [S] 11.5 H h H h 0.5 Harrogate Water Brands

Harrogate Spring 11 H h H h Harrogate Water Brands

Highland Spring [O] 10 H H H H H 1 Al-Tajir family

Co-op Fairbourne Springs [S] 5.5 h h h h h H H H H H h H h E 0.5 Co-operative Group

Marks & Spencer 5 h H h h H H H H h h h H Marks & Spencer Group

Waitrose 5 h h H H h H H H H H h h E John Lewis Partnership Trust Ltd

Aldi 4.5 h H H h H H H H H h h h Aldi Sud / Carolus Stiftung

Badoit 3.5 h h h H H H H h H H h H H Groupe Danone

Evian 3.5 h h h H H H H h H H h H H Groupe Danone

Volvic 3.5 h h h H H H H h H H h H H Groupe Danone

Morrisons 2.5 h H H h h H H H H H h H h h h Wm Morrison Supermarkets

Sainsbury’s 2.5 h H H h h h H H H H h H H h h J Sainsbury

Aqua Pura 2 h H H H h H H H H H H H H Mitsubishi Corp

Glaceau Smartwater 2 h h H h H H H H h h H h H H H Coca-Cola Company

Schweppes Abbey Well 2 h h H h H H H H h h H h H H H Coca-Cola Company

Lidl 1.5 h h H H h H H H h H H h h H h H Schwarz Beteiligungs

Tesco 1.5 h H H H h h H H H H H H H H Tesco plc

Acqua Panna 0.5 h H h H H H H H H h H H H H H Nestlé SA

Buxton 0.5 h H h H H H H H H h H H H H H Nestlé SA

Nestlé Pure Life 0.5 h H h H H H H H H h H H H H H Nestlé SA

Perrier 0.5 h H h H H H H H H h H H H H H Nestlé SA

San Pellegrino 0.5 h H h H H H H H H h H H H H H Nestlé SA

Vittel 0.5 h H h H H H H H H h H H H H H Nestlé SA

Asda 0 h H H H h H H H H H h H H H H H Wal-Mart Stores Inc

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USING THE TABLESPositive ratings (+ve):

• Company Ethos:

e = full mark,

E = half mark.

• Product Sustainability: Maximum of five positive marks.

See all the research behind these ratings on www.ethicalconsumer.org. For definitions of all the categories go to www.ethicalconsumer.org/subscriberarea

[S] = sales fund clean water projects [R] = bottles have recycled content [O] = catchment land certified organic

USING THE TABLESEthiscore: the higher the score, the better the company across the criticism categories.

H = worst rating,

h = middle rating, empty = best rating (no criticisms).

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Drinking directly from the natural spring at Malvern.

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Our ‘best buy’ is tap water. See page 34 for details of refill campaigns and

reusable bottles.

ethic

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nsumer.orgBES T BUY

If you have to buy bottled water, we recommend the brands whose sales fund clean water projects.

Belu is best and is available to buy in bulk in recycled-content glass bottles.

Co-op Fairbourne Springs is the best widely available brand but is only sold in plastic bottles.

RECOMMENDED

Buying bottled waterThis guide covers brands of unflavoured still and sparkling water. Flavoured water brands will appear in the soft drinks report in the next issue.

The market is dominated by global food giants Danone and Nestlé who, between them, account for nearly half of all sales. In the UK, sales were estimated at £2.2 billion in 2016. 71% of UK adults drink bottled water of some kind, prompted by the spotlight on the health effects of sugar, especially in terms of childhood obesity and dental health.

Bottled water sales are likely to receive a further boost in 2018 with the implementation of the soft drinks levy.1 Global bottled water consumption is projected to grow to over 520 billion litres per year by 2020, with a value of over $200 billion.1

As well as the mainstream bottled water brands, we have covered five charity water brands: Belu, One Water, Life, Thirsty Planet and Co-op Fairbourne Springs, whose sales fund clean water projects.

A brief history of bottled waterAccording to James Salzman, the author of ‘Drinking Water: A History’, monks at holy wells produced special water flasks for pilgrims to take away as proof of their visit – the first medieval bottled water. Then came spa water as a cure for all ailments. In 1740, the first commercial British bottled spa water was launched in Harrogate. With the advent of chlorinated tap water in the early twentieth century, bottled water nearly died out. But in the late 1970s, the marketing might of Perrier made bottled water fashionable. Since then, and boosted by the introduction of lightweight, convenient and portable plastic bottles in the 1990s, the bottled water industry hasn’t looked back. It has created a massive demand for a product that no-one needs.

Mineral, spring or table? Mineral and spring water must come from an underground source and be bottled at source. They must both be labelled with the name of the spring and its location.

Spring water can be processed to remove pollution or minerals. Mineral

water cannot undergo any treatment apart from the addition of carbon dioxide to make it fizzy. It must also contain certain levels of minerals and the source must have undergone two years of frequent microbiological testing.

‘Table’, ‘mountain’ or ‘natural water’ is usually filtered tap water. In a classic real-life version of ‘Peckham Spring’ as sold by Del Boy in Only Fools & Horses, companies even sell us bottled tap water. Most famously, Coke tried, in 2004, to sell us its Dasani brand of ‘purified’ tap water (‘Dasani’ appropriately means ‘nothing’). That brand only lasted five weeks over here but it is still one of the bestselling brands in the USA.

Look on the label to see whether it says ‘spring’ water or ‘mineral’ water. If not, it may just be tap water.

Sparkling water may have carbon dioxide added to it or it may be naturally sparkling at its source like Perrier and San Pellegrino.

Water milesThe two bestselling brands of water, accounting for 29% of the bottled water we drink in the UK, come from France. This makes no sense whatsoever so avoid Volvic and Evian. Other imported waters from France are: Badoit, Perrier and Vittel. San Pellegrino and Acqua Panna are imported from Italy whilst SPA Reine comes from Belgium. Nestlé Pure Life is mainly sourced from Derbyshire but it may be sourced from the EU.

As with most things, local is best, so think local and drink local. Here is a list of the spring and mineral water brands sourced in the UK. Brands not on the list may just be bottled tap water.

England

Northumberland – Abbey Well, Glaceau SmartwaterEden Valley, Cumbria – Aqua Pura, Tesco AshbeckBuxton, Derbyshire – BuxtonStaffordshire – Asda, LidlStretton Hills, Shropshire – WaitroseHarrogate, North Yorkshire – Harrogate Spring Water, Thirsty PlanetHuddersfield, Yorkshire – Morrisons

Scotland

Perthshire, Scotland – Highland Spring, Tesco PerthshireAberdeenshire – Waitrose 1

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Brand p per 100 ml

Belu 28

One 20

Co-op Fairbourne Springs 9

Life 8.2

Thirsty Planet 7.5

Price comparison: the charity brands of still water

Wales

Powys, North Wales – Belu, Co-op Fairbourne SpringsPembrokeshire, South Wales – One Water, Life WaterBrecon Beacons, South Wales – Brecon Carreg

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The companies behind the brandsNestlé is the world’s biggest food company. It made €10.4 billion in profit in 2016, €867 million of which came from sales of its 51 brands of bottled water around the world including the six in this guide. It is the biggest bottled water company in the world and Nestlé Pure Life is the world’s biggest brand.

It is one of the main shareholders of L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics company. Nestlé also appears in the Dairy Milk guide as a part-owner of Rachel’s Dairy.

See the box out on page 30 for details of the Nestlé baby milk boycott.

Coca-Cola receives a mark for Climate Change because it uses global-warming HFC refrigerant gases in its fridges, dispenser systems and vending machines. In the UK alone, it has over 200,000 of these pieces of cooling equipment.

Coke’s Glaceau Smartwater spring water implies that it is an intelligent drink or drinking it makes you more intelligent. It is ‘vapour distilled’ to remove minerals and impurities, then ‘remineralised’ with the electrolytes found in energy drinks. But consultant dietitian Rebecca McManamon said: “The bottom line is there is no benefit in demineralising water, getting rid of the minerals and adding them back in …

the way this water has been processed is no better or worse for you than regular tap water.” The water is from Morpeth, Northumberland – and is the same spring water sold as Abbey Well.5

See the box on page 30 for details of the Killer Coke boycott.

Brecon Carreg is sourced from the Brecon Beacons National Park. Brecon Beacons Natural Waters (its previous owner) started in 1978 as a cottage

industry, in converted barns on Lwyndewi Farm. In 1983, the

Belgian independent, family-run bottled water company,

Spadel Group, acquired the company and started

expanding the business. Spadel’s Belgian

Spa Reine brand comes in 40% recycled plastic bottles. Spadel is ultimately owned by a company registered in Luxembourg, a tax haven, and therefore receives our worst rating for

likely use of tax avoidance

strategies.

Harrogate Spring was the first commercial British

bottled water, launched in Harrogate in 1740. By 1914, it was the largest exporter of bottled water in the country, “proudly keeping the troops hydrated from England to Bombay”. 100 years later, it signed an anniversary deal with the Ministry of Defence to supply water to military bases, ships and submarines around the world for which it loses a half mark in the Arms & Military Supply column. It currently

boasts “last year the Harrogate-based business exported nearly two million bottles of spring water, with Russia being its largest overseas market.”

The company lost half a mark under Animal Rights for sponsoring the Ascot and Royal Ascot horse

racing festivals. Horse racing in general in the UK has been criticised by the League Against Cruel Sports and PETA. In October 2016, Animal Aid reported they had handed in a petition signed by over 100,000 people accusing Ascot officials of “turning a blind eye to animal suffering”. They stated, “Ascot has had the worst fatality record of any flat course in Britain”.3

Danone is the second largest company in the global baby milk market and a significant source of violations of the ‘International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes’.

Danone is stepping up its targeting of health workers and the public around the world, in violation of international baby milk marketing standards. For example, Danone provides nurses uniforms embroidered with Danone Baby Nutrition in the neonatal ward of a premier hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The uniforms not only provide free advertising for the company but medical endorsement of its products, and could give the impression that it generously pays nurses to serve in the hospital. Realising that the Danone uniforms made them into company agents, nurses started covering up the embroidered logo with a patch of cloth and a safety pin.1

In the UK, Danone’s formula brands are Aptamil and Cow & Gate.

Baby Milk Action is currently running the ‘Say NO to formula company sponsorship – say DanoNO!’ campaign.

Danone also appears in the Plant Milk guides as the owner of the Alpro and Provamel brands.

Highland Spring, from the Ochil hills in Scotland, has had Soil Association organic accreditation for its catchment area since 2001. Its ultimate parent company however, Park Tower Holdings Establishment, is based in the tax haven of Liechtenstein. Also in the Park Tower group are Park Tower Hotel, a luxury hotel in London, and Blackford Farms. As cattle and sheep were listed in Blackford Farms’ 2014 accounts under ‘Stock’ and their selling price referred to, the

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In April, Greenpeace activists installed this 2.5 tonne ocean plastic sculpture on the doorstep of Coca-Cola’s London HQ, in protest at the company’s role in ocean plastic pollution.

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company lost marks under Animal Rights. Park Tower Holdings Establishment is ultimately owned by the billionaire UAE businessman Mahdi Al Tajir.

The ‘charity’ brands

These brands donate money from the sale of their bottled water to clean water projects for which they receive an extra 0.5 point in the Product Sustainability column.

Belu had loads of information about its environmental impact on its website. It sells Powys bottled water mainly for the hospitality industry, i.e. hotels, restaurants and cafes. But you can buy it online in crates of 12 or 24 from Aqua Amore or if in London, Nexpress. 100% of profits go to WaterAid. It doesn’t export its water.

Its bottles have the highest recycled content of any of the brands in this

guide. It uses ‘ethical glass’, which is 18% lighter, and 45% recycled content. Its green glass range has 80% recycled content. Its plastic bottles are currently

50% recycled content. All bottles are made in UK. Belu received a

0.5 plus point in the Product Sustainability column for

the recycled content of its bottles.

Belu claims to have been ‘carbon neutral’ since 2006 because it has reduced the carbon footprint of its packaging and offsets its remaining carbon emissions with Carbon Clear. “Belu is certified to the only independent standard of carbon neutral certification

PAS2060. The offsets purchased were certified in accordance with the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). This applies to the carbon emissions of all of our products from the initial raw materials we use through to customer’s use and how the bottles are disposed of at the end of their life, and not just our head office.”

Global Ethics was one of the first UK companies to become a B Corp, a company certified to be for the benefit of all stakeholders, not just shareholders. (For more on B Corps, see the feature in EC167 or on our website www.ethicalconsumer.org/commentanalysis/ethicaleconomics/bcorporation)

Global Ethics was launched by Duncan Goose, formerly a director of a marketing agency, after being caught in Hurricane Mitch in Honduras in 1998 – a natural disaster responsible for killing 20,000 people – and experiencing life without access to drinking water.

Its charitable arm, The One Foundation, gives 100% of its profits to fund sustainable water projects in Rwanda, Kenya, Malawi and Ghana. Over ten years it has raised over £15 million providing clean, safe water to over three million people. Its aim is to raise £20 million by 2020.

It is also hoping to launch the Global Investment Fund for Water campaign this year, in partnership with the bottled water industry. The aim is to apply a 1 cent per litre levy on all bottled water sold globally creating a $3 billion annual fund to invest in clean water programmes to end global water poverty by 2030, in line with the UN’s Global Goal.6

One Water is 100% British spring water. It never exports its water.

The glass bottles are made from 35% recycled glass

and its plastic bottles are made from 25% recycled plastic for which it received a 0.5 plus point in the Product Sustainability column.

The Co-op Group has been working

with the One Foundation for more

than ten years. It is the only supermarket with

an own-brand charity water. 3p of every litre of Co-

op branded bottled water sold funds One Foundation projects. In

January 2017, the Co-op Group said that 70% of the money raised by the One Foundation had come from sales of its Fairbourne Springs water. It had donated £7 million over a 10-year partnership helping 1.5 million people.2

Additionally, in May 2017, the Co-op announced that 1p will be donated from every litre of non-own-brand bottled water it sells as part of the Global Investment Fund for Water campaign (see above).2

Life Water was set up in 2005 by Simon Konecki. He is married to singer Adele and is an ex-Lehman Brothers broker who “got sick of that greedy and corrupted

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Belu sales fund WaterAid’s clean water projects across 38 countries.

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Boycotts‘Killer Coke’

The ‘Killer Coke’ campaign is still alive and kicking. 14 years after the international boycott of Coke was launched in 2003, the Killer Coke website continues to report on campaigns against Coca-Cola around the world.

The campaign began two years after the Colombian food and drink union Sinaltrainal sued Coca-Cola and its Colombian bottling partners, alleging that they had hired illegal paramilitaries who had murdered nine union members at Colombian bottling plants. The judge in the case removed Coca Cola from the suit in 2003, and in 2006, the case against the bottlers was also dismissed.1 However, it was reported, in August 2016, that Colombian courts were preparing a case against 50 companies, including Coca-Cola, accusing them of financing the now-defunct Colombian paramilitary AUC group.2

Nestlé and baby milk marketing

Nestlé is subject to a boycott call by Baby Milk Action for its promotion of breast milk substitutes. It is the biggest violator of the World Health Organisation’s ‘International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes’. According to UNICEF: “Marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding are potentially hazardous wherever they are pursued: in the developing world, WHO estimates that some 1.5 million children die each year because they are not adequately breastfed.”

An International Nestlé-Free Week is planned from 30th October to 5th November 2017 – www.babymilkaction.org/nestle-free-week.

Morrisons and Amazon

In March 2016 Morrisons entered into a deal with Amazon to sell its groceries via Amazon’s online platform. Amazon is the subject of a boycott call by Ethical Consumer for tax avoidance so Morrisons lost half a mark in the Boycott Call category for having a strategic relationship with a boycotted company.

Lidl and kangaroo meat

Viva! (www.savethekangaroo.com) is running a boycott campaign against Lidl for its stocking of kangaroo meat.

world.” Life Water claims that every bottle funds at least 1,000 litres of clean drinking water projects in India and Africa through its own charity drop4drop.

There was very little info on its website apart from about the clean water projects it funds. We did find out elsewhere4 that Life Water says it is bottled at a certified organic source in Pembrokeshire, but we could not find out who certifies it. The bottling facility is powered by renewable electricity and bio-diesel. All recycling is done on site and carbon emissions are

offset by planting broadleaf trees and shrubs in the catchment. In 2009, it says it became ‘carbon neutral’ to Kyoto Standards but it was not clear whether that included its products or just its head office operations. It never exports its water.4

In 2013, Simon Konecki lost a challenge against Pepsi after arguing that the name of the soft drink giant’s SoBe Lifewater was too similar to his Life bottled water product and should not be sold in the UK.

Thirsty Planet is owned by Harrogate Spring Water. For every litre sold, Thirsty Planet donates at least 4p to Pump Aid, an independent charity which helps provide clean water, improved sanitation and hygiene education to some of the poorest communities in Malawi. It has raised £2 million since 2007. The question is, why doesn’t it guarantee a donation for every bottle of Harrogate Spring water it sells as well?

References: 1 Breaking the Rules 2014 – IBFAN 2 www.thenews.coop/118650/topic/democracy/co-op-group-donate-funds-bottled-water-sold-one-foundation-agm-told 3 www.animalaid.org.uk/protestors-accuse-ascot-racecourse-officials-turning-blind-eye-animal-suffering 4 International Green Awards 2012 – www.greenawards.com/judges/2012-judging-panel/simon-konecki 5 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3842084/How-trendy-water-Coke-no-better-tap – 16 October 2016

References: 1 https://business-humanrights.org/en/coca-cola-lawsuit-re-colombia 2 https://colombiareports.com/coca-cola-facing-terrorism-support-charges-colombia

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A beached whale with a stomach full of plastic bags. A turtle entangled in plastic rubbish. Seabirds picking

through plastic wrappers in their foraging grounds. These are just a few of the brutal images that have made headlines over the past six months, and which starkly illustrate that plastic pollution is one of the greatest threats facing our oceans.

Millions of tonnes of plastic are contaminating our oceans – with devastating consequences for marine life. From uninhabited Pacific islands to Arctic seas, the oceans are becoming a plastic soup, clogged with plastic pieces ranging from plastic bottles and packaging carried by wind and waterways into the sea, down to tiny microbeads washed down the drain in personal care products.

Once in the ocean, plastic can last for hundreds of years, fragmenting into smaller pieces that continue to travel around the world on ocean currents, both attracting and releasing toxic chemicals in seawater.

These plastic pieces are choking marine life and are being eaten by animals all along the ocean food chain – including seafood that ends up on our plates. That means that in a plate of half a dozen oysters, there could be up to 50 pieces of

microplastic. A cross-party group of MPs last year echoed calls from scientists on the urgent need for more research into the health risks for humans from plastic pollution in fish and seafood.

And this problem is getting worse. A rubbish truck’s worth of plastic is ending up in the ocean every single minute, culminating in up to 12.7 million tonnes of plastic entering the sea each year.

Why is this catastrophe happening?To track the source of the problem, we have to travel far away from the ocean – and straight to the mega-corporations responsible for pumping out millions of tonnes of single-use plastic packaging, like bottles, bags and food wrappers.

Major players in the soft drinks industry, like Coca-Cola, Nestlé and PepsiCo sell billions of plastic bottles each year – with recent estimates that a million plastic bottles are sold every minute globally. These plastic bottles are designed to be used for just 5-10 minutes before being discarded, where they risk ending up in our environment.

These giant companies, with huge plastic footprints to match, are trying to wash their hands of the problem and blame levels of plastic pollution on customers who don’t recycle. But when you think that Coca-Cola alone sells over 100 billion single-use plastic bottles each year, you get a sense of why our recycling systems cannot keep up – and why over half the plastic bottles produced around the world are simply being dumped after one use, ending up on our beaches, our streets or in landfill. In the UK, 16 million plastic bottles go unrecycled every single day.

That’s why, earlier this year, Greenpeace shone a light on these soft drinks giants in its ‘Bottling It’ report, working out that the top five brands (excepting Coca-Cola, which refused to disclose its sales) produce plastic bottles equivalent to the weight of 10,000 blue whales each year – two million tonnes. Worse still, none of these companies (Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, Suntory, Dr Pepper Snapple) has any serious plans to move past single-use plastic, in fact, the industry overall has actually increased its use of single-use plastic in recent years.

Bottling itLouisa Casson, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, tells us about its campaign to tackle plastic pollution.

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Plastic bottle floating in the sea in the Firth of Forth, Scotland. Up to 12.7 million tonnes of

plastic waste enters the oceans every year.

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These companies use less than 7% recycled content on average in their bottles – failing to support the recycling industries they claim to hold in high regard – and some of them have even been caught lobbying against policy measures to boost recycling, such as deposit return schemes. Earlier this year we revealed that Coca-Cola was prioritising deposit return schemes in the EU for ‘fight back’ in internal strategy documents. The company also spent close to €1 million lobbying the EU commission, and met several times

with politicians in Westminster.If we’re going to protect our oceans

from the harmful impacts of plastic pollution, we need to stop more plastic flowing into the ocean. That means major plastic polluters like these companies need to reduce their plastic footprint and move away from single-use plastic. This involves embracing reusable packaging that isn’t designed to be thrown away after one use, and ramping up the amount of recycled content in their packaging.

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What can we all do?

Refill

We know that we’ll need action from individuals, governments and corporations to tackle plastic pollution. Many of us now carry reusable bags with us when we go to the shops. Using refillable bottles and coffee cups is another great way of reducing your own plastic footprint. You can also amplify your impact by encouraging local shops, cafes and pubs to make it easier for customers to reduce their plastic footprint, for example, by advertising the option to refill bottles with tap water; moving away from single-use plastic straws and cutlery; or changing suppliers to use more recycled, compostable or durable packaging.

Return

It is our collective power which will be vital if we are to end ocean plastics. Just as public pressure successfully secured a government ban on microbeads, the wave of public outcry at the broader ocean plastics crisis is already spurring political momentum to tackle other parts of the problem, like plastic bottles. The Scottish Government has said yes to a deposit return scheme and has commissioned a detailed study into how a deposit return scheme (DRS) could work in Scotland, where a small refundable charge is added to drinks containers and returned to the customer when they bring the bottle back. There is strong cross-party support for introducing a DRS, which has boosted collection rates to over 90% in many European countries. This Scottish support is leading the possibility of change across Britain: Environment Secretary Michael Gove has confirmed that his department is also looking into an English DRS, while Welsh Assembly Members have shown strong support for using new devolved powers to tackle the scourge of plastic pollution.

The unaltered stomach contents of a dead albatross chick photographed on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific in September 2009 include plastic marine debris fed the chick by its parents.

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Targeting Coca-ColaEqually, consumer pressure is ramping up to make companies think twice about where their packaging ends up. Heavily branded bottles and wrappers aren’t such a marketing dream when they end up washing up on beaches around the world. We know that big players in the soft drinks industry are now fearful about becoming the poster child of ocean plastics, with Coca-Cola hiring PR giant Edelman this summer to help the company “tell a better story” about its packaging.

But the company’s actions are yet to match its rhetoric – spun through a new multi-million-pound advertising campaign on recycling. Coca-Cola Great Britain released a new strategy this summer which announced a minimal increase in their 2020 target for recycled content levels, from 40% to 50%, and failed to push through the kind of innovation which is needed to start moving beyond single-use plastics. The same kind of pressure which has been applied through health campaigns, forcing concessions from Coke over sugar in its products, is needed to tell the company that the times are changing and it can’t afford to be associated with ocean plastic pollution.

As the market leader, Coca-Cola has the means and influence to effect a sea change across the industry. Yet Coca-Cola is failing to step up and show the leadership required. The company has no target for reducing its single-use plastic packaging, with throwaway plastic bottles jumping by nearly a third as a proportion of its global packaging mix since 2008.

The company continues to claim that using 100% recycled plastic would be impossible – yet 100% recycled bottles have been rolled out on a number of soft drinks lines over the past decade. In 2007, Suntory’s Ribena became the first major UK soft drink brand to use 100% recycled plastic. Canadian brand Naya Natural Spring Water started using 100% recycled plastic bottles in 2009, followed by PepsiCo’s 7Up with 100% recycled ‘EcoGreen’ bottles in 2011. Hong Kong-based brand Watsons Water has offered customers ‘Go Green’ bottles since 2015 and Nestlé’s Natural Spring Water began using 100% rPET bottles in the US in 2015.

However, change is coming. Earlier this year, Coca-Cola was forced to U-turn on its opposition to deposit return schemes after Greenpeace revealed the company’s

concerted lobbying against DRS in Holyrood, Westminster and Brussels – and Coke’s own customer polling showed strong support for the introduction of a deposit return system in the UK.

What companies need to doGreenpeace’s ‘Bottling It’ survey of the top six global soft drinks brands – Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Suntory, Danone, Dr Pepper Snapple and Nestlé – concluded that the companies need to take drastic action now:

phase out single-use plastic,

embrace reusable packaging and support deposit return schemes,

make sure bottles are made from 100% recycled content.

Read the full survey ‘Bottling It: the failure of major soft drinks companies to address ocean plastic pollution’: www.greenpeace.org.uk/sites/files/gpuk/Bottling-It_FINAL.pdf

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Turn the plastics tideAt Greenpeace, we’ve found a hugely positive reaction from our supporters to tackle the problem of plastic pollution. Far too many of us are familiar with seeing plastic bottles on our coastlines and refuse to accept that there can’t be a better way. As this momentum grows, ocean plastics will become too difficult for major companies and governments to ignore too. This problem isn’t going away anytime soon – but we can start to turn the tide on ocean plastics now.

Take ActionTo support the campaign, you can sign the Coke petition – www.greenpeace.org.uk/choke and share the Coke video – www.greenpeace.org.uk/shareChokevideo

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“The bottled water industry has spent millions of dollars to convince us that the only place you can get safe water is from a bottle, and that we need this product,” said Corporate Accountability International, a US non-profit group that campaigns against the corporate control of water. But the reality is that there are fewer standards concerning the cleanliness of bottled water than there are for tap water in Britain and the US.20

And think of the financial savings to be made by ditching bottled water. Bottled water is 500-1000 times more expensive than tap water. For example, according to industry body Water UK, the average cost of a litre of tap water in the UK is 0.1p.2 A litre of the UK’s bestselling brand Volvic (from our Best Buy supermarket Co-op) is 89p, that’s 890 times more than tap water.

If you’re a customer in a licensed premises like a bar, theatre, café or restaurant, you are legally entitled to ask for free drinking water.

To find your nearest public drinking water fountain using Find a Fountain – www.findafountain.org

Refill campaignsThere are plenty of tap water campaigns to get involved with. Here are a few:

Frank Water’s #PledgeToRefill campaign calls on people to carry a refillable water bottle. See also their interview on page 35.Refill.org.uk guides people to refill points in participating cafes, restaurants, etc. in Bristol, Cornwall,

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Dorset, Devon, Bath and Bradford-on-Avon, Brighton, Norwich and Hunstanton. The businesses simply put a sticker in their window – alerting passers-by to the fact they’re welcome to come on in and fill up their bottle – for free! Refill produces an app to see where you can refill on the go. Give Me Tap (www.givemetap.co.uk) also produce an app showing where to find free water refills or there is a map on their website. tapwater.org is a not-for-profit organisation promoting the drinking of tap water in the UK. They have an iPhone app for free refilling stations or a map on their website. Onelessbottle is campaigning to get bottled water out of London by championing a refill culture.

Bottles for lifeThere are loads of reusable water bottles on the market made from either plastic, metal or glass.

Stainless steel bottles

Stainless steel is a sustainable recycled metal with 95% of world steel recycled. Look for 100% food-grade stainless steel

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The alternative to bottled water – corporation pop!

interior otherwise it might just be stainless steel exterior with an aluminium interior covered in a clear plastic lining. Look for BPA-free plastic caps or plastic-free steel caps.

Glass bottles

Obviously more breakable but you can buy bottle sleeves or casings to protect them.

Plastic bottles

These are ubiquitous and cheaper than steel or glass. Many are now labelled as BPA-free. BPA (Bisphenol-A) mimics the hormone oestrogen and has been linked to developmental and reproductive disorders. The use of BPA in baby bottles was banned in the EU in 2011.

However, there have been reports that even BPA-free plastics might contain oestrogen mimicking chemicals so perhaps plastic bottles are best avoided.23

Some reusable bottle makers:

Jerry Bottle (http://jerrybottle.com) is a not-for-profit social enterprise selling reusable water bottles. 100% of profits go to its Waterfall Charity to fund water projects around the world. They sell stainless steel and BPA-free plastic bottles. If you look at the bottom of your reusable steel jerry water bottle you will see the coordinates of the water project you have funded, so you can trace exactly which village your bottle is funding.

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Klean Kanteen (www.kleankanteen.co.uk) make stainless steel bottles with either BPA-free polypropylene caps or plastic-free lids (steel and bamboo). A family-owned US company which is a B Corp, a company certified to be for the benefit of all stakeholders, not just shareholders. They introduced the first stainless steel, BPA-free, reusable water bottle in 2004.Frank Water (www.frankwater.com) sell BPA-free plastic bottles or Klean Kanteen stainless steel bottles and cotton bottle holders. Refill.org sell stainless steel bottles. £1 from each sale will be donated to City to Sea anti-plastic campaign and £1 will be donated to WaterAid.Give Me Tap sell stainless steel bottles. Each bottle sold helps give a person in Africa clean drinking water for five years.Tapwater.org stainless steel bottlesRetap glass bottles are Danish designed and made from strong borosilicate glass (as used in labs) and come with a 5 year breakage guarantee. You can have a BPA-free plastic lid or a wooden one and you can buy a separate cotton sleeve to protect it. Available from

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www.scandinaviandesigncenter.com and www.greentulip.co.uk. If you buy from www.5050hydrate.com 50% of annual profits go to a charity of your choice – Greenpeace, Water Aid, Keep Britain Tidy or Unicef.

What to do about sparkling waterWhilst bottled still water is easily replaced with tap water the same cannot be said of sparkling water. And if you are going to have a fizzy drink, sparkling, plain water is better than a fizzy sugary drink.

The answer is to make it yourself from tap water but this solution has been made much more difficult because of the SodaStream boycott, virtually the only manufacturer of sparkling water machines.

The SodaStream boycott

This Israeli drinks manufacturer has long been a target of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, launched by Palestinian civil society organisations in 2005. Its principal manufacturing plant used to be located in the illegal West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, to the east of Jerusalem.

But, in 2015, SodaStream left the West Bank citing commercial considerations, with the transferral of operations to a factory in the Southern Negev region of Israel.

BDS campaigners argued that the company’s withdrawal from the West Bank was a testament to their efforts, with SodaStream’s links to the settlement economy an embarrassment internationally. In 2013, CEO Birnbaum even admitted the factory’s location had become “a pain in the ass.”

But SodaStream’s new factory is situated in Lehavim, close to the city of Rahat,

a township in the Negev where many Bedouins have been forced to relocate to by the Israeli state, and which is blighted by high unemployment and is lacking in basic services and infrastructure.

The boycott of SodaStream continues because BDS argue that the company is complicit in the displacement of Bedouin Palestinians.5

Alternatives to SodaStream

There are other counter-top machines such as Drinkmate, Isoda, or Limo Bar. Or there is the cheaper and lower tech Bubblecap which you just screw onto a used plastic bottle. But it’s hard to get the replacement CO

2 canisters that

charge these machines without using SodaStream’s.

You can avoid SodaSteam altogether by buying an old fashioned-style soda siphon (see image) and smaller CO

2 cartridges

to charge it. Catering and bar suppliers

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References: 1 Mintel Bottled Water, March 2017 2 Mintel Soft Drinks June 2017 3 Water UK FAQs – www.water.org.uk 4 Investigation of mineral waters and soft drinks in relation to dental erosion, 2001 – www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11556958 5 SodaStream to Close Illegal Settlement Factory in Response To Growing Boycott Campaign, Oct 30, 2014, BDS Movement 6 One Foundation, August 2017, www.onedifference.org/world/the-one-foundation 7 European Environment Agency – Use of freshwater resources, July 2017 8 WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) Report 2017 9 The eco guide to bottled water, The Guardian, 25 November 2015 10 Are plastic jars worse for the environment? The Guardian, 12 May 2013 11 Only a third of UK consumers’ plastic packaging is recycled, The Guardian, 21 November 2016 12 http://ciwm-journal.co.uk/glass-recycling-hits-73-in-the-eu-for-first-time 13 www.berrymanglassrecycling.com/glass-recycling/facts-on-glass-glass-recycling 14 https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/news/trumps-decision-allow-plastic-bottle-sales-national-parks-slammed 15 The Guardian, A million bottles a minute: world’s plastic binge ‘as dangerous as climate change’, 28 June 2017 16 www.naturalhydrationcouncil.org.uk/environment/bottled-water-packaging 17 https://www.foodandwatereurope.org/tag/right-to-water-2 18 How bad are bananas, Mike Berners-Lee 2010 19 The story of bottled water, 2010 – https://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/video/story-bottled-water 20 Should I stop drinking bottled water? The Guardian, 1 June 2015 21 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/20/nestle-water-bottling-california-drought 22 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-fibres-found-tap-water-around-world-study-reveals 23 www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certichem-eastman-bpa-free-plastic-safe

Next Issue Product guides to...

Next issue publishedmid-Dec

Coming soon:

tea

chocolate

washing machines

kettles

cars

nappies

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sell these siphons and cartridges, such as www.nisbets.co.uk, www.creamsupplies.co.uk and www.drinkstuff.com. Austrian company Isi make glass, aluminium or stainless steel ones which sell at £30 upwards. The CO

2 cartridges are about

30p each. The only downside is that the cartridges are disposable, but they are made from steel so can be recycled.

Or you can make fizzy water yourself following instructions and videos on the internet. These either involve using homebrewing type equipment like kegs, regulators and CO

2 tanks or you can go

ultra-low tech and use old plastic bottles, vinegar and baking soda and rely on a bit of home chemistry.

Perfume & Aftershave Underwear Wine & spirits

Soft drinks Fruit juice

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Bottled waterNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

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Why did you stop selling water in plastic, and what do you do instead?

FRANK Water’s guiding principle has always been that bottled water is a luxury. Drinking tap water from a refillable water bottle should be the consumer’s first choice.

Since 2010 we have sold refillable bottles at festivals, and online, and offered free refills of chilled filtered water to anyone who buys a bottle, or a wristband, at events. We have more demand each season. And in the last few months alone our incredible volunteers have served almost 100,000 people using refillable bottles, which could have saved the equivalent in single-use plastic bottles, and over 8 tonnes of carbon.

We hope to pave the way for other producers to rethink their business model and move away from plastic waste that is killing marine life, adversely affecting communities in the developing world and endangering species across the planet.

It was this reality that has led us to completely stop selling water in single-use plastic bottles, however we do still offer water in glass bottles, with the raw materials sourced in the UK.

Why carry on with glass bottles if you are focusing now on other ways to raise funds?

For people wanting water for home or work, we recommend coolers and filters, but we do supply water in glass to a number of independent delis, cafes, and

restaurants. These bottles are made from 32% recycled material.

We still bottle at a family-run spring in North Devon. The water is collected from an artesian spring – the most sustainable source of spring water, which bubbles to the surface on its own. The small bottling factory is run mainly using solar energy and supports numerous jobs in the community.

We did a lot of research into the environmental impact of alternative packaging, including Tetra Pak cartons and aluminium cans. However, each have their own environmental implications. For example, mining of bauxite for aluminium is having a devastating impact in areas near where we work in India. 500ml Tetra packs are not made in the UK so would require us shipping them, pre-filled with water, from Germany.

Also, we’ve always used our labels to educate people about those who don’t have a choice over the quality or source of water they have to drink. This has been great in driving people to support our wider work and all the other ways that they can get involved.

What have you learned in the last 10 years about how to use your donations most effectively for lasting change?

We have our own charity which enables us to work directly with grassroots local partners in India and Nepal, and enables supporters to clearly see where funds go. Over the last 12 years we’ve directly

improved the lives of over 330,000 marginalised people, and learned an incredible amount.

We have always been advocates for the right to access safe drinking water but, to increase impact, we now work on sanitation and hygiene improvements too.

We need to fund ‘soft’ budgets such as community mobilisers and public health promoters, which doesn’t fit with the ‘just build them a toilet’ philosophy of funding. Our targets are not toilets built but toilets used.

We focus on helping marginalised people, such as Adivasi (tribal people) in India, and especially women and girls.

Community involvement in their own solutions is vital to sustainable systems – that’s why we no longer have one set solution to any problem, but work it out with each community.

We have also moved decision making from the UK to our India-based team for adaptive programme management – this means that our programmes change throughout the year but they are far more impactful for it.

Finally, we encourage governments to scale up resourcing and funding, and build local knowledge in watershed management and how to access government support, so that communities can work within their own political structures to map out their own futures.

Find out more on the FRANK Water website www.frankwater.com

FrankWater

We interview Katie Alcott from FRANK Water, a charity which sells water in glass bottles to cafes and restaurants with 100% of profits going to water projects in India. They are not generally available in shops and so don’t appear on our table.

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ClothesNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

Jeans guide update Leather

Since the last issue of the magazine, subscriber James Hartshorn has got in touch to say that he’d found some leather items sold by companies that had been given a clean bill of health:

Kuyichi – sells leather belts

Hiut – jeans come with leather patches on the back. After ordering, customers can email the company to request no patch or a fabric patch. The company also said it was looking into vegetable leather options but this is not available at present.

Both companies now lose half a mark under Pollution & Toxics and Animal Rights.

M&S sustainable selvedge denim jeans

Marks and Spencer has launched a new range of men’s jeans that have been made using five times less water than conventional methods.

The ‘sustainable selvedge’ jeans use low-impact technology from industrial laser machinery producers Jeanologia to reduce the environmental impact of each product. Jeanologia specialises in sustainable and efficient technologies for the garment finishing industry.

Its technologies help to save water, energy and chemicals, cutting waste and emissions.

The new range, which are £45 a pair, have been designed using the M&S ‘Plan A 2025’ commitment. M&S claims

that Plan A 2025 is “an ambitious eco and ethical customer-focused plan” designed to “tackle the big issues facing retailers, consumer businesses and society”.

All M&S products, food and clothing alike, will have to have a Plan A sustainability attribute by the end of the 2020. Every product will have attributes which address all priority social, ethical and environment impacts by 2025, and source 100% of cotton from sustainable sources by 2019.

You can find this new collection on the M&S website www.marksandspencer.com

Launch of Ethical Fashion GuatemalaWeavers and leather workers in Guatemala who sell their products to tourists, have discovered that they are being sold online on sites like Etsy at nearly 10 times the original price. Additionally, many of these sellers are falsely claiming that by purchasing the products, it is benefiting the artisans who make them.

The launch of Ethical Fashion Guatemala intends to give power back to the makers by providing the artisans with a platform of their own. The finished version of the website will feature 2000 copyrighted products from 43 weaving cooperatives, made by over 1000 Guatemalan artisans. Only

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10% of the profit will go to Ethical Fashion Guatemala to help maintain the website.

James Dillon, co-founder of Ethical Fashion Guatemala claims that:

“This is about making money for the artisans by providing them with the technology tools to sell products … They are a proud people who want income, not charity.”

Ethical Fashion Guatemala is also pursuing the, largely American, Etsy sellers ripping off the artisans they buy from. It has already identified 64,000 products that infringe on artisan copyrights and is in communication with Etsy’s legal team to get them removed.

http://ethicalfashionguatemala.com

Craftivist Collective protest at London Fashion WeekMembers of the Craftivist Collective, a group which uses stitch as a form of gentle protest, have been trying to educate shoppers about the failing ethics of the fashion industry with ‘fashion statements’.

‘Shop-dropping’ involves creating messages, taking them into retailers and planting them inside pockets of clothing for consumers to discover. The messages take the form of ‘fashion statements’ that are handwritten on miniature scrolls. They contain phrases such as:

“Beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder ... It is woven into the very fabric of the cloth. Our clothes can never be truly beautiful if they hide the ugliness of worker exploitation.” On the outside, they say: “Please open me.”

Its members have targeted shops close to Somerset House during London Fashion Week. Founder Sarah Corbett, in collaboration with Fashion Revolution, has been shop-dropping since 2014, and has targeted different Fashion Weeks all over the world.

“We want people to discover the scrolls later on so that it’s intriguing. We hope that it might create genuine curiosity about how their clothes have been made,” says Corbett.

“I genuinely love fashion, and during fashion week there’s a spotlight on the industry. I’d like to use that so we can think about how fashion could be beautiful on the inside as well as the outside.”

Find out how you can get involved and be a craftivist: www.craftivist-collective.com

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Tax justiceethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

The Big Four: lobbying for tax avoidance in the USA Deloitte, KPMG, PwC and EY have been lobbying in the United States for the dilution of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which regulates financial auditors.

Seizing the opportunity offered by the current ‘Trump window’, the Big Four are trying to get certain rules about auditor independence rolled back; rules that prohibit firms providing both consulting and auditing services to clients; rules that were introduced after Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen, collapsed.

According to financial journalist, Francine McKenna, Deloitte spent $560,000 in the first quarter of 2017 lobbying

legislators for the “modernization of independence requirements.” KPMG spent $490,000 to monitor legislation regarding auditor liability and other finance Acts, and paid a company $80,000 to track “any language attempting to require the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to hold its disciplinary proceedings in public, and any other provisions pertaining to the PCAOB or its oversight.”5

Back in 2014, LuxLeaks papers revealed that PwC had sold non-audit tax services to its audit clients, which is prohibited under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

John Christensen, head of the Tax Justice Network, said: “the Big 4 firms are up to their necks in independence violations that haven’t yet been investigated by the regulators, and are keen to change the rules before the latter come knocking on their doors.”

A recent investigation by the Scottish Herald newspaper has found that, of the 24,000 currently active Scottish Limited Partnerships (SLPs), only 8% (1,999) actually have a named human with significant control.1

SLPs are a unique kind of company that can only be set up in Scotland under Scottish Law. They are unique in that, firstly, they have a ‘separate legal personality.’ This means that the SLP itself can own assets, enter into contracts, sue or be sued, own property, borrow money, and grant certain types of security.

Secondly, however, in a piece of unabashed accounting sophistry, the SLP is taxed as if it did not have a separate legal personality: the tax authorities ‘look through’ the company and tax the partners on their share of the partnership income and other profit-sharing gains.

So, if the partners are not resident in the UK and the partnership does not trade in the UK, then there is no tax to pay. Richard Murphy described this as “tax haven UK at work.”4

“There is, in effect, no company regulation in the UK at all now”

Richard Murphy

References: 1 ‘Herald research: Scots ‘tax haven’ firms bypassing transparency laws’ www.heraldscotland.com 11 September 2017, viewed 21 September 2017 2 www.brodies.com, viewed 21 September 2017 3 ‘Another Scots agency linked to £2bn Azeri slush fund’ www.heraldscotland.com 9 September 2017, viewed 21 September 2017 4 ‘The UK: the ultimate ‘no questions asked’ tax haven’ www.taxresearch.org.uk 12 September 2017, viewed 21 September 2017 5 ‘How the Global Audit Firms, Led by Deloitte, Are Using Their Lobbying Clout to Dilute Sarbanes-Oxley Reforms’ Francine McKenna, www.promarket.org, 12 May 2017, viewed 21 September 2017

Brodies law firm, which has offices in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Brussels, describes this unique hybrid status of separate legal personality and ‘tax transparency’ as the “best of both worlds” and ‘ideal vehicles’ for multi-party investor structures.2

Although around for more than a century, the number of SLPs has mushroomed in recent years as private equity and property investment funds seize the opportunity to further what Brodies delicately describes as their ‘modern business purposes.’ Purposes such as laundering £2.2 billion by associates of Azerbaijan’s authoritarian President to pay off western politicians, for example, a scam in which 20 SLPs were implicated.3 There is also evidence that SLPs are used by international criminals, including those running child pornography sites and shady arms deals.1

The British government responded to these revelations, in June 2017, by imposing new rules requiring SLPs to declare their main controllers or face fines of £500-a-day until they do. According to the Herald, only a third had so far complied with this and, of these, 1,999 had a named human person with significant control. Some had another SLP as their ‘person of significant control’ (separate legal personality, remember?!)

The job of checking submitted declarations (8,500) and chasing up the SLPs that haven’t submitted anything (16,000) lies with Companies House in Cardiff. More specifically, it lies

with the six civil servants employed to police the accuracy of the filings of more than four million UK firms.

Richard Murphy responded to this story saying that:

“There is, in effect, no company regulation in the UK at all now. It’s true that documents must be filed, but no one

gives a damn what they say. If they are not supplied at all then the standard action of Companies House is to assume that the entity is no longer required by its owners and to then ‘strike it off’; i.e. dissolve it without trace. Why go to more esoteric, and sometimes better regulated, tax havens to get a company when the perfect solution is here in the UK?”

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Beer and lagerNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

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It may feel like the mainstream brewers have us over a barrel but the smaller independents are on the rise. Joanna Long explains how to find (or create!) an ethical brew.

Hope in hops

Our beer and lager score table is split in two: one half for the mainstream companies

and one for smaller, vegan breweries that produce mostly organic ales. The big issues weighing on your pint are water consumption, isinglass and GM. Fortunately, with the rise of small co-operative and community breweries, it has never been easier to find a pint with a clear conscience.

Water footprintThe basic components of beer are barley, yeast and water. Factoring the water footprint of barley (1,420 litres/kg) plus the water used in brewing, we find that it takes around 298 litres of water to make one litre of beer, roughly 169 litres per pint. This is an optimistic figure as it excludes the water footprint of other ingredients involved in manufacturing beer, including hops.1

Water consumption, and how to reduce it, is on the agenda for most of the big brewers, some of which have set ambitious

Packaging

One of the most comprehensive studies into the carbon footprint of beer, carried out in 2008 by Climate Conservancy, found that glass accounted for a fifth (21%) of the lifecycle carbon emissions of a 6-pack of ale, well ahead of distribution (8.4%).7 In his 2010 book How Bad Are Bananas?, Mike Berners-Lee estimated that the footprint of a pint of locally brewed cask ale was 300g CO

2e, with 3% of that

consumed by packaging, contrasted with 900g CO

2e for a mainstream bottled beer.

Berners-Lee didn’t give a breakdown of the mainstream beer’s carbon footprint and, of course, any figures vary between breweries, but the question of packaging remains.

Aluminium is lighter than glass, which reduces transportation costs, and recycling it consumes only 8% of the energy that would have been used to make a new can.8 On the other hand, the original manufacture of aluminium involves mining bauxite and also the rates of recycling aluminium the UK are only 41%.9 Although heavier, glass can be endlessly recycled with no degradation of quality and UK rates of recycling are high: over 67%.9 Glass can also be reused without leaching chemicals.

If you’re having a party, you might want to consider ordering a polypin from your local brewery. These are plastic versions of the normal 20 litre ‘pin’ cask and are available in various, more portable, sizes. Although unlikely to be recyclable, polypins are re-usable.

targets for reducing the hectolitres of water used to manufacture each hectolitre of beer (hl/hl):

AB InBev: 3.2 hl/hl by 2017Heineken: 3.5 hl/hl by 2020Molson Coors: 2.8 hl/hl by 2025Carlsberg: 1.7hl/hl by 2030

Carbon footprint

Transport

Transporting all of these hectolitres raises the question of beer’s carbon footprint. Marston’s website states that its distribution fleet covered 6.4 million miles in 2016 (“the equivalent of travelling around the earth over 300 times”), generating 9,487 tonnes of CO

2 emissions

in the process.2 Molson Coors, which brews and distributes over a third of the UK’s beer,3 produced direct emissions of 39,197 metric tonnes from its UK operations.4 That would almost get you to Venus!

The Society of Independent Brewers puts the impact of the UK’s alcohol production and consumption (which is mostly beer) at around 1.5% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions5 and efforts by the big brewers to address this environmental impact are limited. Only AB InBev, Molson Coors and Heineken had at least two future quantified targets regarding environmental performance. The others had just one or, more often, none at all.

The growing popularity of American craft beer isn’t helping the situation. According to figures released earlier this year by the Brewers Association, the UK imported over 460,000 barrels of US craft beer in 2016. That was over 10% of all US craft beer exports, second only to Canada (54.8%).6

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AB InBev Budweiser, Bass, Boddingtons, Brahma

AB InBev/Molson Coors Beck’s, Corona Extra, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Pilsner Urquell, Stella Artois

CarlsbergCarlsberg, Holsten Pils, San Miguel, Special Brew, Tetley’s, Brooklyn, Beerlao, Tuborg, Warsteiner

Diageo Guinness, Harp, Tusker

Greene King Greene King IPA, Old Speckled Hen, Abbot Ale, Belhaven

HeinekenHeineken, Amstel, Foster’s, John Smith’s, Murphy’s Stout, Kronenbourg 1664 (brewing)

Marston’s Marston’s, Lancaster Bomber, Thwaites, Wainwright

Molson Coors Carling, Coors, Cobra, Staropramen, Miller

Molson Coors/Asahi Group Grolsch, Peroni Nastro Azzuro

Who makes what?

Why isn’t all beer vegan?

You may have assumed, not unreasonably, that a drink made of hops, yeast and water was already vegan, but the issue lies in the process of removing the yeast

haze from beer after fermentation.

This process is called ‘fining’ and often employs

isinglass, a substance derived from the dried swim bladders of

fish. Isinglass is rich in collagen, which binds to yeast cells in the beer and settles at the bottom of the cask.10 This settling process happens without isinglass, just more slowly: it can take 48-72 hours for an unfined beer to settle, compared with less than 24 for fined beer.

Why is vegan draught beer less common?

These vastly different rates of settling tend to be the reason why vegan draught beer is less common than bottled beer (the exception being Guinness, which has gone vegan in draught form first). Because unfined casks need longer to settle, a pub would need a lot of storage space to keep the taps flowing with vegan beer as each barrel needs to be in situ for longer before serving.

So, am I drinking fish guts?

Very little isinglass remains in the beer that is eventually drunk, but many find the use of the substance at all in the production process unacceptable. People could just drink slightly cloudy beer. This was the general way of things in ‘ye olde’ times, when beer was drunk from a shared, earthenware bowl. But with the advent of the glass (and basic hygiene) came the question ‘what’s that floating in my beer?’ The growth of the craft beer and home brew movements have brought with them a greater market for unadulterated ales and a greater tolerance of cloudy beer, all of which could be good news for vegetarians and vegans.

On our score table, breweries certified by the Vegan Society as producing only vegan beer received a positive Company Ethos mark. Those with some certified vegan products received a full product sustainability mark, while those

do with virtuous behaviour on their part and more to do with the political activities and disrespect for human rights shown by other companies. Carlsberg, Heineken, AB InBev and Diageo, for example, each had eight or more subsidiaries in oppressive regimes and therefore lost whole marks under Human Rights. Carlsberg was in last place, with operations in ten oppressive regimes: Belarus, China, India, Kazakhstan, Laos, Myanmar, Russia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam.14

In 2016, AB InBev spent the most on gaining political influence in the United States with a total of $620,084, going to both Republican and Democratic parties, and $3.8 million spent lobbying on bills relating to the brewing sector.15 Along with Carlsberg and Heineken, AB InBev was also a member of the World Economic Forum, an international corporate lobby group which exerts undue corporate influence on policy-makers in favour of market solutions that are potentially detrimental to the environment and human rights.16 Heineken and Diageo were also members of several other corporate lobby groups, including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the European Roundtable of Industrialists and the American Chamber of Commerce.16 All of these companies lost a mark under Political Activities.

On the bright side, AB InBev received our best rating for environmental reporting. It was the only major brewer to do so though.

Marston’s, Fuller, Smith and Turner, and Greene King all run pubs around the UK that serve food and were rated under our Animal Rights category for serving meat not labelled as organic or free range, and under our Palm Oil category as this ingredient is prevalent in the catering industry.

With a few exceptions, all the companies in our guide have more brands than we can comfortably fit on our table. A full list of who owns what is below.

marketing their products as vegan but not officially certified received half a product sustainability mark.

Of the major bigger brands, only BrewDog and Guinness (draught) are suitable for vegans. These are labelled [Vg] on the table.

Genetic modificationAlthough the EU prohibits the use of GM ingredients in products sold in Europe, genetic modification remains an issue among mainstream brewers who operate in markets around the world. Researchers from Carlsberg’s in-house laboratory have been involved in the sequencing of the barley genome.11 Similarly, AB InBev’s Global Barley Research Team develops “new malt barley varieties that increase growers’ productivity” in the name of water efficiency, pest resistance and “climate resilience.”12 These two companies therefore lost a whole mark on the table under Controversial Technologies.

Even those not directly involved in genetic engineering may have GM ingredients in their supply chains. Molson Coors’ GM policy, for example, states that in areas of the world where GMO food products are approved for use and widely available, such as North America, Molson Coors’ suppliers “cannot guarantee that the corn (maize) products that we also use in brewing are GMO free.”13 Molson Coors and others with no company-wide GM-free policy lost half a mark under Controversial Technologies.

Table highlightsOf the mainstream companies, BrewDog, Molson Coors and Asahi Group were the only companies to achieve an Ethical Consumer score of 10 or more. Their position at the top of the table has less to

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The smaller breweriesThe explosion of small breweries in recent years has made it impossible to include them all. So we decided to focus on breweries producing vegan and/or organic beer. We’ve also tried to have a spread of companies from across the UK so that you can buy locally as much as possible, although many of the beers are also available online.

Transparency isn’t the strong suit of these small breweries – none had environmental reports or supply chain policies – but most were spared a worst rating by virtue of being small (turnover

Environment Animals People Politics +ve

MAINSTREAM BRANDS COMPANY GROUP

BrewDog [Vg] * 12 H H h h 1 TSG Consumer Partners

Asahi 10.5 H H h H Asahi Group

CELIA Organic [Vg, O] 10 H H H H h H 1.5 Carlsberg A/S

Grolsch, Peroni 10 H H h h H Molson Coors, Asahi Group

Amstel, Foster’s, Heineken 8.5 h h H h h h H H Heineken Hldg, L’Arch Green

Carling, Cobra, Staropramen 8.5 h h h H h h H H Molson Coors

Carlsberg, Tetley, Warsteiner 8.5 H H H H h H Carlsberg A/S

Fuller’s Honey Dew [O] 8.5 H H H H h H h h 1 Fuller, Smith & Turner, AAM

Budweiser, Bass, Boddingtons 8 h H H h H H H AB InBev

Beck’s, Corona, Stella Artois 8 h h h H h H H H Molson Coors, AB InBev

Lancaster Bomber, Marston’s 8 H H H H h h h h Marston’s plc

Fuller’s 7.5 H H H H h H h h Fuller, Smith & Turner, AAM

Greene King, Abbot Ale 6 H H H H h H H h H Greene King plc

Guinness Draught [Vg] 5.5 h h h h H H H H h h H H 0.5 Diageo plc

Guinness, Harp, Tusker 5 h h h h H H H H h h H H Diageo plc

SMALLER VEGAN BREWERS

Little Valley Ginger Pale [O,F,Vg] 18 e 3 Little Valley Brewery

Little Valley [O, Vg] 17 e 2 Little Valley Brewery

Atlantic [O, Vg] 16.5 e 1.5 Atlantic Brewery

Pitfield [O, Vg] 16.5 e 1.5 London Beer Co, Dominion

Liverpool Organic [O] 16 e 1 Liverpool Organic Brewery

Marble [Vg] 14.5 H e 0.5 Marble Beers Limited

Stroud Brewery [O, Vg] 14.5 H 1.5 Stroud Brewery

Samuel Smith’s Org [O, Vg] 14 H H 2 Samuel Smith Old Brewery

Samuel Smith’s [Vg] 13 H H 1 Samuel Smith Old Brewery

Batemans [Vg] 12.5 H H 0.5 George Bateman & Son Ltd

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USING THE TABLESPositive ratings (+ve):

• Company Ethos:

e = full mark,

E = half mark.

• Product Sustainability: Maximum of five positive marks.

See all the research behind these ratings on www.ethicalconsumer.org. For definitions of all the categories go to www.ethicalconsumer.org/subscriberarea

* = except Jet Black Heart (contains milk) and Dogma, Electric India (contain honey) Vg = vegan

USING THE TABLESEthiscore: the higher the score, the better the company across the criticism categories.

H = worst rating,

h = middle rating, empty = best rating (no criticisms).

below £10.2 million) and having their entire product range certified organic (which contains some protections for workers’ rights). On the other hand, the majority of the small breweries received positive Company Ethos marks for having entirely vegan or organic ranges, as well as sustainability marks for vegan and organic products.

Organic and Fairtrade

Organic ale is relatively easy to get hold of from the smaller breweries, while the big players have been slower to cotton on. Organic products are labelled [O] on the table. Breweries that are certified as wholly

organic by the Soil Association received a positive Company Ethos mark.

Little Valley is the only brewery in the UK to do a Fairtrade beer, the Ginger Pale Ale, which is labelled [F] on the table.

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Best buys are the smaller, vegan brewers which received our best

rating for Supply Chain Management: Little

Valley, Pitfield’s, Atlantic, Liverpool Organic.

ethic

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nsumer.orgBES T BUY

We also recommend the other brands in our vegan beers table: Samuel Smith, Batemans, Marble Brewery, Stroud Brewery.

Of the mainstream brands BrewDog is our recommended buy.

RECOMMENDED

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16.5 16

16.5

The companies behind the brands AB InBev are by far the biggest player in beer and lager, with 31% of the £1.2 billion market. Although the company has lots of brands, many are brewed under license by other companies, such as Molson Coors. In October 2016, AB InBev took over SABMiller in a $12 billion deal. The company’s annual report boasted that this expanded AB InBev, with “operations in virtually every major beer market”. The company sold its stake in the subsidiary MillerCoors to Molson Coors.

Molson Coors’ core brands (Carling, Coors) account for around 11% of the beer market but when you factor in its brewing licences (Stella, Peroni, Corona, Beck’s) that figure rises to over 31%, meaning that Molson Coors’ ethics have a big impact on consumer choices. The outlook isn’t great: the company didn’t appear to have a good understanding of its environmental impacts (their report didn’t mention distribution),17 and its supply chain management policies and procedures were threadbare (weak clauses on child labour, forced labour, working hours and living wages, and no clear auditing schedule).18 Add to that political donations totalling $512,188 in 2016 in the USA,15 high-risk subsidiaries in Delaware and Luxembourg,19 and a leaky policy on genetically modified organisms,20 and you start to think they did well to score 8.5.

By way of contrast, another company with the same score stood out as a big player on a positive path. Heineken, which is partly owned by L’Arche Green (which in turn is 88% owned by the Heineken Family), would have received our best rating for environmental reporting if a crucial piece of its sustainable sourcing of raw materials data had been verified. The company had promised in its report that verified data would be published online by the end of March 2017 but this had not happened at the time of our research. Heineken could also have achieved a best rating for supply chain management if its Supplier Code was more detailed and if it had input from stakeholders (NGOs, trade unions, etc.) in its auditing process. Heineken has also published a tax policy stating that it does not use tax havens for tax avoidance purposes and that it supports efforts to introduce country-by-country reporting. Unfortunately, the company did not report any meaningful trading or investment data by country in its own annual report and it had multiple ‘high risk’ subsidiaries in jurisdictions

considered by Ethical Consumer to be tax havens.21 The company therefore still scored a worst Ethical Consumer rating for likely use of tax avoidance strategies.

Greene King is the UK’s biggest pub retailer and brewer. Its Old Speckled Hen and Abbot Ale brands accounted for just under 10% of ale sales in 2016. It also runs over 3,000 pubs, restaurants and hotels all over the country. Like its competitors Marston’s and Fuller’s, Greene King cares little for ethics or corporate social responsibility, with worst ratings for Environmental Reporting, Palm Oil, Factory Farming, Animal Rights, Supply Chain Management and Anti-Social Finance. The company was in trouble with the Advertising Standards Authority earlier this year after a promotional flyer for one of its pubs was placed in the book bags of local schoolchildren. The company said that they did not consider the leaflet to be an alcoholic promotion but the ASA disagreed. They consequently lost a whole mark on our table for Irresponsible Marketing.22

Greene King also lost half a mark under Workers’ Rights for its failure to commit to paying its staff a living wage and for actively campaigning against the national living wage. The National Living Wage, introduced in April 2016, requires that workers over 25 must be paid at least £7.50/hour. Workers younger than 25 may be paid less, down to as little as £3.50/hour for apprentices. The rate set by the Living Wage Foundation says that the minimum should be £8.45 (£9.75 in London). According to a 2014 report by the Living Wage Commission, bar staff, waiting staff, and kitchen and catering assistants were found to be the top three occupations in the UK with the highest proportion of people paid below the living wage. Yet a news piece on Greene King’s website trumpeted the company’s membership of the British Hospitality Association (BHA), whose Chief Executive stated that the BHA was “lobbying to help alleviate the huge impact of the National Living Wage on this [hospitality] industry” and welcomed Greene King’s “perspective and leadership.”23

Stroud Brewery, just south of Gloucester, is a local institution. Established in 2006 using community loans, the brewery also makes an ale using hops grown in its customers’ gardens (see community brewing on page 42).

Atlantic Brewery is a three-person outfit based near Newquay in Cornwall. The brewery grows its own hops, as well as

any additional botanicals, and has been certified organic by the Soil Association since its inception. They export to France by sailboat.

Little Valley Brewery is based in Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire. It produces 100% certified vegan ales. Most of its ales are also certified organic by the Soil Association and, as mentioned above, it brews the UK’s only Fairtrade certified ale.

Pitfields and Liverpool Organic Brewery’s bottled beers are all organic and suitable for vegans.

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DIY alternativesAs ever, you can escape many of the dilemmas of emissions, packaging and genetic modification by joining the growing homebrew movement. Our homebrewer-in-residence, Richard Livings of the Fair Tax Mark, recommends that absolute beginners visit their local homebrew supplies shop for some friendly, face-to-face advice. There are also lots of online forums, shops and recipes, here are some starters:

www.art-of-brewing.co.ukwww.the-home-brew-shop.co.ukwww.brewstore.co.ukwww.themaltmiller.co.uk

Community brewing

If you like beer and gardening but don’t want to brew your own, there is a growing trend for community brewing.

Crystal Palace Transition Town (www.crystalpalacetransition.org.uk/palace-pint) runs an initiative called The Palace Pint where locals grow hops in their gardens and then in autumn hand them all in for brewing by a micro-brewery in neighbouring Penge. The hops are a dwarf variety (Prima Donna), which grow to just 7-8ft and so are suitable for most gardens or patios. Growers can exchange tips and advice throughout the year on the Palace Pint Facebook page (www.facebook.com/groups/197777587020602) and then get together for ‘a bit of a do’ once the beer is brewed!

The New Lion in Totnes (www.newlionbrewery.co.uk) is currently building its own network of local hop growers and also creates ‘collaborative’ brews in partnership with local organisations. Its ‘Circular Stout’, for instance, was infused with oyster mushrooms grown by sustainable mushroom farmers, GroCycle, on coffee grounds, spent hops and grains. A 2014 Sweet Chestnut Ale was created using ingredients from the Agroforestry Research Trust. These creations don’t always make it as far as a bottle, so if you’re interested in a sip then you need to join.

Stroud Brewery, featured on our small breweries table, has an ale made using locally-grown hops: Brewers Garden. It started after the brewery’s founder, Greg Pilley, brewed an ale using green hops grown next to the brewery. The result was so popular that customers offered to grow hops in their gardens and allotments to brew it again the following year. The

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brewery now has a community of 40-50 local growers. Every year, in the second week in September, growers cut the plant whole and bring it to the brewery where they collectively pick the hops. The ale is usually brewed the same day, fermented for a week and then cask conditioned for a further week before being ready to drink. Growers get a complimentary 9-pint polypin, while the rest is bottled or distributed to pubs. The brew will probably be gone by the time you are reading this but if you’re in the Stroud area and want to become part of the growing network, simply email office@stroudbrewery.co.uk and they’ll send you a plant.

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You can also find or start a community brewing initiative near you via transitionnetwork.org.

Co-operative brewing

There are an increasing number of co-operative breweries around the UK. With the ongoing decline of local pubs and village breweries, communities have been coming together to save their favourite brews and beer houses. The poster-child of this movement is the Hesket Newmarket Brewery Co-operative in Cumbria, which was set up in 1999 to take over the local pub and brewery after the couple who were running them announced their plans to retire.

Delivery of hops for Stroud Brewery’s 2016 batch of Brewers Garden.

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References: 1 waterfootprint.org, visited 14 September 2017 2 www.marstons.co.uk, visited 14 September 2017 3 Beer – UK – December 2016, Mintel 4 Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP): Climate Change 2017 Information Request – Molson Coors Brewing Company 5 ‘How green is your beer?’ www.siba.org, viewed 21 September 2017 6 ‘UK is now second-largest importer of US craft beer’ www.morningadvertiser.co.uk, viewed 21 September 2017 7 The Carbon Footprint of Fat Tire® Amber Ale, 2008, Climate Conservancy 8 www.recyclebank.com, visited 14 September 2017 9 Defra, UK Statistics on Waste, 15 December 2016 10 Brew Your Own www.byo.com, visited 14 September 2017 11 www.carlsberggroup.com, visited 2 August 2017 12 AB InBev 2015 Global Citizenship Report 13 Molson Coors Brewing Company, GMO Policy 2013 14 Carlsberg Annual Report 2016 15 Open Secrets www.opensecrets.org, viewed 24 August 2017 16 www.weforum.org www.wbcsd.org, www.amchameu.eu, www.ert.eu, member lists viewed April 2017 17 Our Beer Print 2017, Molson Coors Brewing Company 18 Molson Coors Brew Company Supplier Standards 2012 19 Molson Coors Brewing Company Annual Report 2017 20 Molson Coors Brewing Company GMO Policy 2013 21 Hoovers.com, viewed 23 August 2017 22 www.asa.org.uk, viewed 31 August 2017 23 www.greeneking.co.uk, viewed 2 August 2017

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Useful linksThere are a number of directories you can consult to find breweries doing things differently. Ethical Consumer found inconsistencies in some of them, so do check before you chug:

Vegan Society www.vegansociety.com has a directory where you can search for breweries.Barnivore www.barnivore.com is a directory of vegan-friendly beers, wines and spirits. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) www.camra.org.uk maintains a list of partly or wholly organic breweries.Search for co-operative breweries in Co-operatives UK’s directory www.uk.coop/directory

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Biggar Brewing, Walney Island Barrow-in-Furness biggarbrewing.co.uk

Farmageddon Brewing Co-operative Northern Ireland www.farmageddonbrewery.com

Boundary Brewing Belfast boundarybrewing.coop

Lacada Brewery Northern Ireland www.lacadabrewery.com

Star Inn Salford www.staronthecliff.co.uk

Pumphouse Community Brewery North Essex/Suffolk toppbrew.co.uk

Adur Brewery Brighton www.adurbrewery.co.uk

Drone Valley Brewery Derbyshire dronevalleybrewery.com

Topsham Ales Devon www.topsham-ales.co.uk

Co-operative breweries around the UK

Jim and Liz Fearnley ran the Old Crown pub in Hesket Newmarket and, in 1988, started a brewery in a converted barn out the back. The beers they brewed were exclusively for the Old Crown, which soon became a place of pilgrimage for real ale enthusiasts. Gradually, as the brewery’s reputation spread, other pubs across Cumbria expressed interest in the beers and a small network of outlets was established. The Fearnleys sold the pub in 1995 to concentrate on the brewery and a few years later were looking to retire entirely.

The news of the village brewery’s potential closure brought together a group of enthusiasts to work out how best to

ensure its survival. And, lo, the Hesket Newmarket Brewery Co-operative was born.

The co-op is a community enterprise through which real ale enthusiasts, who either live locally or have local connections, own equal shares in the brewery. Over the years, the number of shareholders has grown to around 100, with more on the waiting list.

The brewery still operates from its barn setting, although the original modified dairy tanks have been replaced by a new brewing plant capable of producing 50 barrels (nearly 15,000 pints) a week. A new temperature-controlled storage facility was later built alongside and opened in

2004 by none other than Prince Charles, who popped back a couple of years later to investigate some new bottling facilities.

The brewery maintains close ties with the Old Crown, which has also become a co-operative, each owning a share in the other.

If you’re in Cumbria you can enjoy a pint of Hesket Newmarket at the Old Crown, of course, but also at a number of other pubs listed on the brewery’s website, www.hesketbrewery.co.uk

The local people who saved the Old Crown in Hesket Newmarket from closure. It is now co-operatively owned by them.

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47

This ethical strifeNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 www.ethicalconsumer.org

Some beers are filtered using animal products

including isinglass, which is, basically, fish guts…

Being perfectly honest, the only organic creature I want to see swimming

in my beer is me.

Last month a friend told me I should try drinking ethical beer. At first, I wasn’t sure what the point was: drinking ethical beer would undoubtedly make me feel good about myself but, surely, all beer does this unless you’re drinking Stella, in which case you’ll end up full of terrible self-loathing … chiefly about the fact that you’re drinking Stella.

Does it taste nice? I asked. “Does that really matter to you? You’re trying to lead an ethical life”, my friend opined …

Once again, I realised that I had failed. When it comes to researching the ethical soundness of products, there are definitely some that I turn a blind eye to – although with beer, maybe it’s more a case of having blurred vision?

Time as a poverty-stricken student taught me never to think about how my beer was made. Only how it was drunk, which tended to be very slowly to avoid having to return to my damp, rat-infested digs. And there were other considerations: if I bought a pint of beer in the Uni bar I had to make sure I had enough money left over for at least three goes on the Space Invaders machine. Don’t knock it – Space Invaders enhanced my green credentials as I was actively engaged in saving the earth almost every day for three years.

Anyway, a bit of basic research revealed that some beers are filtered using animal products including gelatine and something called isinglass, which is, basically, fish guts …

Excuse me? I don’t remember seeing a lager ad with the slogan: “probably the best fish guts in the world”. I remember hearing about beer that was “matured over beech-wood”, not “strained through a trout’s tummy”. Being perfectly honest, the only organic creature I want to see swimming in my beer is me.

Obviously, I am now trying my best to research which beers are ethically acceptable before heading for a night out, which means checking to see if they’re vegan/veggie-friendly; whether they’re locally produced; and if they’re chemical and additive free. Now, all this is fine for my green credentials but, unfortunately, it has had the negative effect of turning me into the sort of real ale bore who’s now close to having no friends left to go out and actually drink with.

Also, it’s likely that I’ll be barred from several pubs in future, as the bar staff seem to think I’m a bit of a pest with my constant queries about the ethical background of the beers they sell. I admit I’m being optimistic with this as, for most of them, giving me the correct change from a £20 note presents a seemingly insurmountable challenge.

I am once again left in a situation whereby, in trying to be ethical, I have created many more problems for myself. So, I have decided the best way around these is to cut out the middle man and start home brewing my own ale.

With home brew, I can make sure the whole brewing process is ethically sound: I can use organic hops and yeast and, most importantly, cut down drastically on the ‘beer miles’ involved in the production process. Now comes the hard part – trying not to make a batch that tastes so bad that I’d happily up the beer miles and pay for it to be flown to the other side of the world rather than drink it.

Oh, and one more thing regarding some of the dodgier real ales and lagers I’ve tried in the name of ethical beer drinking: if a beer gives you the sort of flatulence that smells of six-month-old rotten eggs it shouldn’t be classed as vegan even if it is!

Colin Birch with the ultimate guide to trying, and sometimes failing, to be ethical.

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FeatureNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

It was amidst much fanfare about “fighting the scourge of tax evasion”1 that the UK hosted the G8 Summit

of the world’s most powerful nations in Northern Ireland in 2013. As part of the master-plan, Chancellor George Osborne unveiled plans for a UK register of companies and their owners.

The UK was perhaps feeling the heat from the international community for being at the centre of the spider’s web of tax havens that make up our crown dependencies and overseas territories.2 So, last year’s reforms mean we now have access to information about the beneficial owners of companies – the people or companies that sit at the top of often opaque chains of ownership. It is the first of its kind in the world and the move has been welcomed by corporate campaigners and Open Data activists alike.

Ironically, however, the reforms have also made it much harder to find detailed company shareholder information.

One step forward, two steps backThe old company filing regime for non-listed companies3 provided the public with regularly updated, detailed lists of immediate shareholders. This system has been replaced with one which only requires companies to publicly state shareholders that ultimately own more than 25% of the company (the beneficial owners). They must also just state changes to shareholdings rather than provide a full list of shareholders.

Detailed lists of shareholders are no longer filed for the public record, apart from for new companies when they first register with Companies House.

This means that in order to establish all of a company’s shareholders it is now necessary to look back at the last time it filed a full list, and every filing made since, and work it out based on the reported changes.

A blow to corporate transparency

This may not be too much of a hurdle in the immediate future but as time passes it will become increasingly problematic. In ten years’ time, ten years’ worth of reported changes will need to be assessed. Not only will multiple documents need to be checked but, in some cases, multiple complex calculations will need to be conducted. Companies often issue millions of shares and at any one time there can be pages and pages of different shareholders.

What’s the problem?For Ethical Consumer, which updates ownership information on multiple companies on a daily basis, the reforms have introduced a major headache. But the wider implications are more troubling.

The snapshot of yearly company ownership information we now have is restricted to holdings of 25% or more (beneficial ownership), a level that has been described as “ludicrously high” as a marker of undue influence by shareholders.4 And it hardly needs to be pointed out that this will mask all those with ownership stakes below this.

A legal or administrative hurdle?Although the changes to the company filing regime were brought in with the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act, there does not appear to be any legal reason that Companies House cannot make full current shareholder details public in a more accessible way.

After some probing, a Companies House contact told Ethical Consumer: “I appreciate that ascertaining the current position regarding a company’s shareholders will require more effort from researchers who may have to look at previously filed documents, but the information concerning a company’s current shareholders is still publicly

available and free of charge to anyone with an interest in that information.”5

This more detailed information is available to those with the knowledge, time and expertise to process complex documents. The potential for human error is significant.

In the public interestAlthough the release of company beneficial ownership information should be welcomed, it should not have come at the cost of access to detailed direct shareholder information. According to Murray Worthy of Global Witness:

“Shareholder data is absolutely vital to knowing who’s behind a company. It’s a key part of company research whether you need to know who you’re doing business with or you’re tracking down chains of dirty money being laundered through UK companies.

“We thought Companies House’s decision to publish companies’ beneficial ownership data as open data was a real commitment to transparency, so it’s baffling that they’re now making shareholder data harder to access.”6

Why restrict information in this way? Any move by the government to reduce transparency of corporate activity should ring alarm bells. The harder it is to access information, the fewer people will do so, and restricting information has a chilling impact on democracy.

References: 1 www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/207543/180613_LOUGH_ERNE_DECLARATION.pdf 2 An analogy shamelessly stolen from Nicholas Shaxson in his book “Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World” (2011) 3 Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange and some other stock markets are subject to different rules and must disclose shareholdings above 3% in their Annual Reports 4 www.wolterskluwerfs.com/OnwardRightRatings.aspx?Pageid=6442456364&id=10737427629 5 By email, 14/6/17 6 By email, 26/6/17

Leonie Nimmo discovers that last year’s changes to the company reporting regime are not all that they seem.

Lush Spring Prizeethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

On 16th October 2017, Lush and Ethical Consumer launched the second year of the Lush Spring Prize, a £200,000 annual fund that aims to support projects around the world that are working towards environmental and social regeneration. The Spring Prize celebrates projects around the world that are increasing the capacity of communities and societies to thrive in harmony with nature and each other, building health, wholeness and resilience. It aims to raise the profile of regeneration and its potential to move livelihoods and economies beyond ‘sustainability’.

In the 1990s, sustainability became a buzzword. A lot of amazing work has been done to develop systems that meet the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. But the word ‘sustainable’ has been used a lot to describe situations which prolong ‘business as usual’ and maintain inequalities. Many environments and societies are still degraded, and need more than sustaining – they need regenerating.

Prize detailsThe 2018 Spring Prize will award prizes in the following four categories:

Intentional projects (£10,000) ...to four great ideas in the early stages.

Young projects (£20,000) ...to three projects 1-5 years old seeking to grow.

Established projects (£25,000) ...to two beacons demonstrating success and withstanding the test of time.

Influence award (£25,000) ...to two campaigns influencing policy or public opinion in support of regeneration.

Applications are welcomed from anywhere in the world and to support this, the website contains information in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic.

For more information and to apply see the Lush Spring Prize website (www.springprize.org). Entries close at 23.59 GMT on the 10th December 2017.

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Who won last year?11 prizes were awarded in 2017. Winning and shortlisted project profiles are available on the spring prize website. http://springprize.org/the-prizes

The winners demonstrate the variety of approaches that can be taken to create a more regenerative society: from restoring degraded landscapes to creating platforms that give a voice to marginalised communities.

For example, the Timbaktu Collective received an award for their work in the drought-prone and ecologically challenged Anantapur District in South India.

Since 1991 Timbaktu has worked with 20,763 families on community-led conservation, nature restoration, and social and economic empowerment. The Collective’s work showcases viable models for ‘making markets work for the poor’, and the environment.

Siddharth Rao, Director of Ecology and Conservation at Timbaktu commented: “Nothing is more important than maintaining a healthy relationship with nature and the environment. As a society, we have all but forgotten this in our quest for development and monetary returns. The Spring Prize reiterates that collective action and community-led efforts are valued and cherished.”

Regeneration is made possible by holistic systems designed to create win-win scenarios, where people work in harmony with nature and each other.

The Lush Spring Prize is designed to support this approach and we hope that the winners’ stories will inspire others to join the movement for environmental and social regeneration.

Fringe eventsThis year there will also be a number of fringe events taking place around the prize, such as ‘Meet the Winners’ events in London and Poole in May 2018. The Spring Prize will also have a presence at the Lush Summit in February, alongside many other campaigns supported by Lush.

You can follow the progress of the prize on social media at: www.facebook.com/lushspringprize and www.twitter.com/LushSpring

Introducing the 2018 Lush Spring Prize

49

50

MoneyNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

Invest in solar power in Sub-Saharan Africa

The positive investing platforms Lendahand and Ethex have launched a project called Energise Africa in order to help people invest in household solar power systems in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Six hundred million people in Sub-Saharan Africa currently lack access to electricity, which has a massive impact on their ability to improve their life prospects.

Under the Energise Africa system, investors can lend money to selected businesses such as SolarNow and Azuri. The loans are used to provide solar home systems which families are then able to pay for in instalments over a 1 to 2-year period, after which they own them outright.

You can invest as little as £50 and the projects aim to generate a 4-6 % annual return for investors, although the publicity emphasises that your capital is at risk and returns are not guaranteed. After running for seven weeks, the initial pilot project raised more than £350,000 of investment.

Find out more at www.lendahand.co.uk

NEST makes more steps towards lower carbon investmentThe government-backed auto-enrollment pension scheme, National Employment Savings Trust (NEST), has increased its environmental focus, divesting £27.2 million from high-carbon companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell. It has transferred it to companies that are aiding the global transition to a low-carbon economy, including PG&E, Iberdrola, Vestas Wind Systems and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy.1

NEST is not carbon divested, but is gradually making moves in that direction. In February 2017, it shifted 10% of its investments into a climate change fund designed to move people’s money out of fossil fuels and into renewable energy.2

References: 1 www.pionline.com/article/20170911/ONLINE/170919991/nest-divests-from-companies-not-shifting-to-low-carbon-future 2 https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/feb/24/government-pension-scheme-ditching-oil-gas-investments-shell-exxonmobil

The state of green financeA new report by TheCityUK and Imperial College Business School reviews the state of the ‘green finance’ market and argues that it is set to be the new emerging market. Amongst other things the report claims that:

Crowdfunding has funded 121 renewable energy projects in the UK. They provided an average return of 7.36%. Major platforms include Abundance (£42 million raised as of June 2017) and SunFunder ($25 million invested).

There are currently 45 green bonds listed on the London Stock Exchange, that have together raised around $12 billion. Green bonds finance environmental projects such as renewable energy.

The UK’s Green Investment Bank (created in 2012 by the UK government to attract private funds for environmental preservation, and owned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) has invested £3.4 billion in more than 100 green infrastructure projects.

Find out more at www.thecityuk.com/research/growing-green-finance

•

•

•

Carbon divested funds: financial performance

Fund (all funds listed here are fully or mostly carbon divested)

5 Year cumulative performance to 19th Sept 2017

Ethiscore as of July 2016

(EC161)

Impax Environmental Markets 148.1 9.5

Henderson Global Care Growth 110.4 7

F&C Responsible Global Equity 109.8 4

FP WHEB Sustainability 96.7 14.5

Royal London Sustainable World 96.0 6

Aviva Liontrust Sustainable Future European Growth (formerly Alliance Trust Sustainable Future European Growth)

94.5 9

Old Mutual Ethical 94.0 5.5

Sarasin Responsible Global Equity fund (formerly Sarasin Equisar Socially Responsible)

89.9 6

Jupiter Ecology 85.5 6.5

AXA Ethical Distribution 49.6 6

Castlefield B.E.S.T. Income inc 49.6

9 (updated 16th August as fund had

changed owner)

7IM Sustainable Balance 43.6 8

Quilter Cheviot Climate Assets Fund

Data unavailable (fund is less than

5 years old)4.5

IA Global (for comparison) 79.6 –

51

Save our bankethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

The last remaining link between the Co-operative Bank and its former owner, the Co-operative Group, has been broken.

This follows the re-capitalisation deal that was finally agreed in September – providing the bank with the extra £700m it said it needed to meet regulator requirements and create a solid footing for the future. The deal also resolved the tricky problem of how to separate the liabilities for the joint Co-operative Group and Bank pension fund. The upshot was that the Co-operative Group, which until late 2013 owned 100% of the bank, had its shareholding reduced to just 1%.

Then we got the news that the Co-operative Group had sold its 1% shareholding – for £5m (an interesting indicator of the market value post deal). Formal links between the two organisations will continue until 2020, but this symbolic break ends a story lasting 145 years – from the foundation of the bank by the Manchester Co-operative Wholesale Society.

The sale also points to a flaw in the argument of those calling for the bank to be stripped of its co-operative name: it wasn’t a co-operative in the first place. It wasn’t owned by its customers or its workers. It was an asset of the Co-operative Group so that, when the time came, the last remnant could simply be sold off.

I used to think that this was unimportant, that being owned by a co-operative was what made it a co-operative bank. But the seven principles of the International Co-operative Alliance, universally accepted as the definition of a co-operative, make it clear that co-operatives have members, who own at least some of the assets and exercise democratic control over those assets. That was never the case with the Co-operative Bank.

Now, with a new lease of life and renewed confidence, the bank is arguing that what matters most is how it behaves: its application of ethics (based on co-operative values) and its support for the co-operative movement – for example its £1m funding for co-operative development.

There’s some truth in that. But the aims of the Customer Union and the Save Our Bank Campaign are both to ensure that the bank sticks to its ethical principles, and to see an eventual return to some form of co-operative ownership and control. While it may never have been a co-operative, that doesn’t mean it can never become one.

By the time you read this, the members of the Customer Union will have voted whether or not to approve the re-capitalisation deal. If the answer is yes then we’ll need to plan how to move forward with our two aims.

The bank has restated its commitment to ethics with an advertising campaign celebrating 25 years since it led the way by adopting an ethical policy. The real test of that policy over

those years has been the business that the bank has turned down on ethical grounds, and its mechanism for monitoring and reporting on this.

Now the bank wants to lead again by developing positive ethical policies – what it wants to invest in, as well as what it won’t. The Customer Union could have an opportunity to help decide that new direction.

With no part of the bank in co-operative hands, the aim of increasing the co-operative stake may seem harder to achieve than ever. But wait: one tiny part of the bank does remain in co-operative hands, the minuscule shareholding owned by the Customer Union. If members vote to approve, the Customer Union will need to decide how much effort to put into growing this stake, or whether to focus on building institutional co-operative ownership when the hedge funds sell up – in line with the preliminary research by Ethical Consumer (http://s.coop/bankcapital).

We’ll be deciding on our next steps at our second gathering in Manchester on 18 November, where members and supporters will also be able to attend by web.

You can book your place by visiting our website www.saveourbank.coop – hope to see you there.

Uncharted waters

This advert was first placed in the press on 4 November 2013 to reassure customers that although the Co-op Group would no longer have full ownership of the bank, its ethical code would not change because it would be written into its constitution for the first time.

Shaun Fensom tells us about the next steps for the bank and the Customer Union.

52

LettersNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

Is ethical fashionstill a mountain

to climb?

£4.25EC

168 Sept/Oct 2017

ww

w.ethicalconsum

er.org

Product guides to:High Street Clothes ShopsEthical ClothingJeansDesigner Brands

Plus: the first Fairtradegold from Africa

••••

Praise for Hiut DenimIt was good to see mention of Hiut Denim in your jeans investigation. As a fan of theirs, I was disappointed that you didn’t mention their story to rekindle the craft in their Welsh factory. I think UK consumers would have liked to know about this. I know they

care deeply about people and the environment so it will be good to see them sort out their actual reporting for your next update.

While I’m writing I would also like to add my voice to the letter from Ulrik [Letters page EC168] regarding a shift in focus. I love to hear about the positive news and the people and companies making a good difference. Most of us already know how bad the mainstream is. The investigations into bad practise are important in holding people accountable and we all hope it makes a difference. I know that the biggest difference is made by focusing on positive choices. So I’d love to see more words on how good the good ones are and less on the bad. The lack of info on Hiut is a good example of this.

Simon Sadler, by email

More needed on kids shoesI am dismayed by this week’s email, “Ethical checklist: back to school”. I like to think that Ethical Consumer gives responsible advice and can be relied on (and I use it frequently as a guide to most of my purchasing, so I hope so!); however, this guide contains at least one piece of advice which is nothing short of irresponsible. In the footwear section: “Shopping for school shoes can be a laborious task, with many hours spent trawling through the shopping centre. Skip the high street and pick one of our ethical shoes retailers, many of which you can buy from with a click of a button.”

Presumably what I should read into

this is that not one person in your team is a parent. If they were, they should be aware that the critical issue with a child’s footwear is fit. Shoes which don’t fit damage feet (which applies to all of us) – but specifically they damage growing feet. Fitting shoes is a specialist job, and requires knowledge and equipment which I certainly don’t have, and I doubt many others do either.

Yes, I’d like to buy ethical shoes for my children; but my top consideration has to be, “do they fit properly and am I sacrificing my child’s future wellbeing for my ethics?”. Damaged feet hurt. If I insist that they wear shoes which are potentially going to cause long-term damage, then the answer is yes, and that’s crossing the line between being a responsible parent and being ethical.

And finally – even if I wanted to sacrifice responsible behaviour for ethics – do any of your suggested retailers actually supply children’s sizes? I haven’t checked them all, but the ones I’ve looked at don’t.

Helen Gill, by email

Ed: When we put the ‘back to school’ guide together we were looking for black flat shoes suitable to wear to school and college. The guide was aimed at kids from primary up to sixth form college. Most of the ethical retailers we listed sold shoes in sizes from UK 2 or 3 (EU 35 or 36). The exception is Blackspot which are only available from size 6. Wills have a kids section from size 8.5 (EU 26).

With Freerangers you can send a foot plan with your own measurements. But we take your point that a good fit is important for growing feet.

Pukka no longer pukka I knew Pukka had sold out before I received your recent newsletter. An utter betrayal of the trust of all their loyal customers. I bought, quite literally, into their herb teas, products and ethics and I’m very angry about what they’ve done and will not be buying anything else from them and I’ve told them so.

Karen Selway, by email

Don’t forget greenhouse gas emissions from imports!In the Home Energy report in EC167, a familiar picture of the various sources of UK greenhouse gas emissions was presented (source Dept for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy). But I’d like us all to remember that this is only part of the full picture of the emissions for which the UK is responsible.

The diagram showed the emissions generated on UK soil. For the purposes of international analysis, comparison and reporting this is a useful picture, but it ignores the emissions arising from production and transportation of all the goods the UK imports, and of foreign travel. The UK has a large trade deficit and we as consumers should take responsibility for the emissions of the products we consume, wherever they’re produced. Indeed much of the Ethical Consumer magazine’s research is about impacts of consumer goods that occur abroad, higher up the value chain.

For comparison WWF Sweden has reported that the emissions embedded in Sweden’s import and foreign travel exceed the greenhouse gas emissions that are generated on Swedish soil. The UK situation maybe not be as extreme – has anyone done an assessment? – but a presentation of the full picture for the UK would be helpful. Please consider how the emissions embedded in imported goods and services could be included in future articles.

Claire Wigg, by email

Product guide suggestionsI’m now living in a flat which is prone towards damp, and so have to use a dehumidifier. I believe that this is very common problem in flats which have double glazing. Opening the window is not a good option either, as I have a high celling and very large windows, which would mean loosing any of the heat gained via the night storage heaters. [I’m sure that there a lot of other people who rent from private landlords who are in the same situation.] So far I’ve only managed to find either chemical dehumidifiers, or electric ones

53

Lettersethicalconsumer.org NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017

We welcome readers’ letters. Letters may be edited for reasons of space or clarity. If you do not want letters to be published, please mark them ‘Not for publication’. Our address is on the contents page, or email us at letters@ethicalconsumer.org

which use a lot of electric power. Thus I am on the lookout for one which is more ecologically sound.

Martyn, by email

Congratulations on continuing to do such an excellent job. Can I suggest a field that you might look into in the future? – stationery. I find buying ethical stationery online confusing and on the high street almost impossible. I’m thinking in particular of writing paper, envelopes and notebooks, but a full

investigation would ideally cover the full stationery spectrum. Is it something that you might find time to look into sometime?

Can I also suggest that you investigate “organic supermarkets”. I’ve just moved to Camden and am trying to decide where to shop. There’s a Planet Organic that seems good but is a long bike ride away, as well as expensive. There’s a Whole Foods Market that’s closer but owned by Amazon. Today I discovered an Earth Natural Foods

shop a stones throw from my flat. Your help in working out who’s genuinely ethical and who’s just an exercise in greenwashing would be very, very much appreciated. Keep up the good work!

Nick Morphet, by email

54

Inside ViewNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017 ethicalconsumer.org

Are you funding hate? If you’re a customer of either EE or O2, two of the UK’s biggest broadband and mobile phone providers, then brace yourself for some bad news.

You’re probably unaware, but both of these companies are regular advertisers in the Daily Express, Daily Mail and the Sun. Crucially, their financial support is helping to keep these newspapers churning out their breathtakingly racist anti-Muslim and anti-refugee headlines.

EE and O2 are just two of the companies now being targeted by Stop Funding Hate, a new groundbreaking campaign that’s challenging the overt racist content of the tabloids.

“Our aim is to persuade these newspapers that it no longer makes good business sense to use anti-Muslim and anti-migrant rhetoric on their front pages as a way of selling their newspapers,” explains Richard Wilson from Stop Funding Hate.

By persuading companies such as EE and O2 to pull their advertising from the likes of the Sun, Wilson wants to put the financial squeeze on the tabloids’ bottom line.

“We want to get to a place where advertisers won’t want to be associated with this kind of hateful rhetoric and it won’t be profitable for these newspapers to publish it anymore.”

Stop Funding Hate launched in August 2016 when people came together online to express their shock and anger following an unprecedented number of negative headlines about refugees, Muslims and migrants in the Express, Mail and Sun.

Many believed that the constant attack against these communities was fuelling the dramatic rise in hate crime across the country.

Such was the level of disgust directed against the likes of the Express that the online discussion quickly snowballed, resulting in a successful crowd-funding

initiative that led to the launch of the campaign which now has over a quarter of a million Facebook followers.

So, how does the campaign get companies to stop advertising with the Mail or Sun?

“Quite simply we ask our supporters to get in touch with companies directly via a Tweet or through Facebook and explain why they should pull their advertising,” says Wilson.

“If enough people make their feelings known it can have an impact.”

The campaign notched up their first major win last November when Lego announced that they would be no longer be advertising in the Daily Mail.

They were quickly followed by other companies including the Body Shop, ‘Ethical Consumer Best Buy’ company the Phone Co-op, and Evans Cycles, who all committed to stop advertising with the Mail.

Fashion retailer JOY have also pulled their online advertising with the Express and Mail. In a series of revealing Tweets the company said:

“It was recently brought to our attention by @StopFundingHate that our ads were appearing next to transphobic and racist articles. JOY is a brand that pride themselves on diversity and inclusion, and we would never want to associate ourselves with these viewpoints.”

But is Stop Funding Hate realistically going to force the Sun to drop its racist language?

“The Achilles heel of newspapers such as the Sun is their increasing reliance on advertising revenue as more people read news online and don’t buy papers,” replies Wilson.

“Whilst most of us don’t read these

papers, most of us are shopping with one of their advertisers.”

Stop Funding Hate is now working with Ethical Consumer to achieve its strategic long-term goal of creating a publicly accessible database detailing where companies place their ads, which shoppers can then use when choosing who to shop with.

“This is a really exciting project to be involved with as it’s an entirely new form of ethical consumer campaigning,” says Ethical Consumer’s Josie Wexler. “Shoppers have an incredibly powerful lever over newspapers such as the Sun because advertising revenue is crucial to the newspaper industry. But they’ve not been able to use it systematically until now.”

And it’s not just in the UK: activists are now targeting companies to pull their ads from racist and bigoted newspapers and websites right across Europe, the US and Australia.

By far the most successful of these is the Sleeping Giants campaign now storming across the US, which has the ultra-conservative and Trump-supporting Breitbart News firmly in its sights.

Since launching last autumn, the campaign has persuaded almost 3,000 companies to pull their ad spend from the Breitbart website.

“When companies see their brand next to inflammatory and bigoted content, they know it shuts off a large portion of their consumer base,” says a spokesperson from Sleeping Giants.

“No company is going to remove ads because a Twitter account asks them to. They do it because they see that they don’t want to sponsor content that denigrates others.”

Battling the tabloid bigotsA new campaign is helping shoppers fight bigotry and racism in the media, says Simon Birch.

Some of the recent Daily Express anti-refugee and anti-migrant front pages.

Make your money do good

Ethex makes it easy. Our online ethical investment and savings platform can help you choose and invest in businesses doing good.

If you’re looking for � range of financial products such as savings accounts, ISAs, equity investments and bonds that offer � social, environmental and financial return visit:

ethex.org.uk

#MakeMoneyDoGood

Make your money do good

Ethex makes it easy. Our online ethical investment and savings platform can help you choose and invest in businesses doing good.

If you’re looking for � range of financial products such as savings accounts, ISAs, equity investments and bonds that offer � social, environmental and financial return visit:

ethex.org.uk

#MakeMoneyDoGood

AnimalAid’s

CHRISTMASFAYRE

Join our 25th Fayre Anniversary celebrations!

Admission£3

Children under

11FREE

100 ethical stands Four vegan cafés Prize-draw & goody bagsLush zone – ‘make-your-own’ product workshopAward-winning comedyInspiring talksCookery demonstrationsChildren’s workshop, facepainting and crèche

Kensington Town Hall, Hornton Street, London W8 7NX(opposite High Street Kensington tube station)

Tel: 01732 364546 | www.animalaid.org.uk

We regret that no animals (except assistance dogs)are allowed into the Town Hall

Sunday 3rd December10am-5pm

@AnimalAidFayre@AnimalAid

AA Ethcial Consumer Ad 91x137:Layout 1 21/9/17 11:10 Page 1

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Ecology Building Society was rated as an ethical

Best Buy for our mortgages and savings accounts

by Ethical Consumer magazine in its product guide

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EBS_Ren_Mort_ad_Ethical Consumer_185x277mm_07.2017_style2_edit.indd 1 19/07/2017 16:23