Do ethical standards labels approve brands or products?
Ethical products
In order to carry an ethical standard label (e.g. Fairtrade, Soil Association Organic Standard etc) a product needs to be produced to the ethical standards set by that particular system. The company that markets the product, whose brand appears on the end product on the shop shelves, is then licensed to use the ethical standard label on specific products which have met those standards.
This does not necessarily mean that the company, or brand, that markets the product is approved by the ethical standards label. Nor does it mean that all the products that they market are produced to the ethical standards set by that system.
Only those products within the brand’s range that bear the ethical standard label are approved by that system.
Ethical brands
If you want to make sure that you are only buying products from brands that work to high ethical criteria throughout their whole business then you could also check to see if they have been given a rating by the Ethical Consumer Research Association on their website www.corporatecritic.org.
Or you could try contacting the company to ask them questions about their ethics in order to satisfy yourself whether or not they meet your ethical criteria.
Also please bear in mind that just because a brand doesn’t have all or any of its products approved by an ethical standards label this doesn’t necessarily mean that the brand or its products are unethical.
Some types of products don’t have a relevant ethical standards label that could approve them. Also some companies choose, for a variety of reasons, not to seek this kind of certification for their products whilst still conducting their business in an ethical manner.
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