Friday, May 1, 2015

Ethical Living Challenge starts today


Today is the first day of the three week "Ethical Living Challenge" (ELC) started by Emma Crane, a 19-year-old Uni of Melbourne student who hopes to inspire others to live ethically.

The focus of the challenge is to make ethical choices as a consumer. According to the ELC,

A huge part of ethical living is about consumerism and buying ethical products, which is what the 2015 ELC focuses on. Ethical products typically:

Don’t use slave labour or child labour
Ensure a fair wage and safe working conditions for workers
Minimise the use of harmful chemicals and GMO
Don’t harm the environment
Come from a responsible company
Give back to the local community
Support sustainable development
And much, much more!

The tasks for day one were to calculate my Slavery Footprint and environmental footprint.  My slavery footprint was 55 slaves, although I am hoping this is an overestimate because the calculator did not account for existing ethical purchasing practices. My environmental footprint is 4 Earths (see the results in the image above). I think my high meat consumption and cross-country plane travel are big contributors.

I'm looking forward to the daily challenges. I can think of many areas where I can make better choices.

As the challenge reminds us, "Every time you spend money you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want." (Anna Lappe)

Would you consider taking part?