One of the questions I get asked more often by readers is whether there's an easy way to find out which companies can be considered 'ethical' and which to avoid.
The answer is never entirely straightforward, as there are whole industries devoted to making this sort of information as vague as possible. But there's a growing number of websites and other resources out there to help you find out the truth behind the talk, and I've just found out about a good one: ethiscore. On their homepage at present is a very intersting table showing the ethical ratings of various commonly-bought bars of chocolate: an important concern, I'm sure you'll agree!
Ethiscore identifies the best and worst organisations by calculating an 'ethical score' out of 20 for a wide range of consumer products and services. There's plenty of free reports - about trainers, butter, toothpaste, mobile phones and loads more. To access the wider range of reports, you need to subscribe: you can do that here and it takes only a couple of minutes.
To clarify, Friends of the Earth does not own ethiscore. We do have a long standing fundraising partnership with ethiscore, which is an independent organisation. We do not have any input or influence into the companies it reviews or recommends, or the green credentials it uses to assess those companies.