Want to send a message with the dollars you spend? Here's what you need to know to select products and companies that are consistent with your environmental values.

• Co-op America offers assessments of corporations, ways to influence their behavior, and lists of green and fair-trade businesses through its "Responsible Shopper" program.

• Consumer Reports has a new Greener Choices Web site, which rates and reviews "products for a better planet."

• New American Dream focuses on reducing wasteful consumption with its tips for the "conscious consumer."

• The Organic Consumers Association offers a guide to "alternatives to the chains" for food, books, clothes, and more.

• Buyblue.org started out as a purely political (and partisan) site, but now it offers rankings of companies based on labor and human-rights practices, environmental responsibility, employment equality, corporate and social responsibility, and industry practices, in addition to campaign donations.

• The classic Shopping for a Better World was first published by the Council on Economic Priorities in the 1980s and has been subsequently updated as Shopping for a Better World: The Quick and Easy Guide to All Your Socially Responsible Shopping.

  ---

  Up to Top
  
  
  HOME | Email Signup | About Us | Contact Us | Terms of Use | © 2008 Sierra Club