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Industry analyst Organic Monitor has an intriguing New Year prediction. Not only will mobile technology be used by growing numbers of people in 2012 but — in the form of smartphone apps — it could cut the maze of eco-labels that consumers have to navigate every time they go shopping.

Organic Monitor acknowledges the important role that eco-labels play in signposting sustainable products across a whole range of products — from food to cleaning products, cosmetics to toys. But it says that “shortcomings and a lack of transparency of many standards” have led to some consumers becoming disillusioned with them.

So, could specialist mobile rating apps offer a credible alternative? Could they eventually make existing ethical and eco assurance schemes redundant?

Organic Monitor believes mobile technology has the potential at least to give a more holistic picture of a product’s sustainability credentials — conventional labeling schemes, it says, tend to look at ethical and eco aspects in isolation. It also argues that rating systems which ‘name and shame’ —such as GoodGuide in the US — can play an active role in encouraging companies to develop more sustainable products.

GoodGuide does indeed look impressive. Set up in 2007 by Dara O’Rourke, a professor of Environmental and Labor Policy at the University of California, it has a whole team of scientists and researchers behind it. It’s already rated over 100,000 products and won plaudits from everyone from the New York Times to Oprah. It’s also a B Corp —a new kind of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.

In the UK of course we have Ethical Consumer — with 20 years’ experience in the field — which is also now offers subscribers ‘personal filters’ to customise ratings to reflect their own key concerns. Check out its very user-friendly website.

Uptake of mobile versions of these services will ultimately depend on how easy they are to use. Their ability to customise ratings will certainly help — we know that consumers often apply a pick and mix approach when making values-based purchasing decision.

I don’t see mobile (and online) rating systems replacing established and trusted national and international schemes such as organic and Fairtrade — in fact these are actually used to inform ratings. But I’m sure there will be a growing role for ethical comparison services of credible provenance and a growth in mobile apps — which put place power in the consumer’s hand right at the moment of purchase. They will also expose unsubstantiated eco claims and fake organisations (for example ‘certification bodies’ cooked up by brand owners!). And, yes, by placing the spotlight on key ethical performance indicators, these initiatives could lead to greener, safer and fairer for everyone.

Jim Manson is editor of Natural Products magazine

I wonder if George Osborne might come to regret the slightly self-satisfied way he told the House of Commons last week “we are not going to save the planet by burdening business with endless social and environmental goals”. Continue Reading

In her foreword to the Soil Association’s new strategy paper The Road to 2020, the organic charity’s new director, Helen Browning, writes:

“Over the last 65 years we’ve endeavoured to bring the organic principles of care, ecology, fairness and health into a world seemingly determined to ignore these values and put its faith in over-consumption and unqualified growth.”

On the face of it this doesn’t look like a great place to be either strategically or philosophically. But Browning’s qualifier — “seemingly” — offers immediate clues on the way forward.

‘The world’ (as in “a world seemingly determined to ignore” organic values) is just like the ‘consumer society’, or the pervasive ‘they’ – an illusory label.

Having labels for the people or things we think are opposed to our values might be convenient but they end up being misleading and obstructing progress.

It is better surely to ask how can we communicate our values to ordinary people and their friends and family, than trying to influence an artificial construct.

The question is how do you do it. The answer that the Soil Association has come up with in The Road to 2020 is to “start where the people are”. The logic here is straightforward: if you a going to reach out effectively, you can’t expect people to understand organic principles immediately, you are going to need to understand where they are coming from and then engage them in ways that they can relate to.

Much effort has gone into influencing public opinion on organic in the past. But often this has been done without “starting where the people are”. My guess is that by using this fresh approach, and perhaps applying a bit of humility in the process, we will discover that — at the level of the ordinary consumer and citizen — there is more genuine support for the principles of care, fairness and ecology than we think.

Last week I visited the brand new £225 million Pembury Hospital, just outside Tunbridge Wells. It’s a genuinely state of the art building, and the country’s first all-single room (512 in all) NHS hospital. Continue Reading

Two thoughts came to mind when I was casting around for something to write about this week.

Thought 1. I’ve just got back from a week in Brittany where I was reminded how every town of any size at all in France seems to boast at least one artisan boulanger and boucher-charcutier. We crave the artisan and the real too but get Greggs and Tesco Metro instead. Why?

Thought 2. A report in The Times this week revealed how reputation management agencies (the ghastly lovechild of PR and marketing comms) are being paid by leading brands to create hundreds of false Facebook friends and Twitter followers to flatter those brands. A timely warning about the downside of the social media revolution?

Which led me to Thought 3. Isn’t it a rich irony that, at the very time marketers are imploring consumers to value the ‘authenticity’ of food products, shopping experiences etc, they are simultaneously developing ever more sophisticated ways of faking it?

We’re so good at fakery in Britain you wonder if it could become one of our leading exports. A typical (and real-life) food retailing example would be the pack of supermarket bacon featuring a photograph of a ruddy-faced British farmer leaning on a five-bar-gate in front of some rolling Sussex downlands — where the Bacon actually came from a Dutch factory farm. But it’s not just fake imagery that we’ve got to deal with, it’s also the breathless ease with which fakers switch from one writing style and vocabulary to another when posting fake customer testimonials. You’d really think that Mrs. E Nibbs was alive and well and totally living in Leighton Buzzard.

Back to matters artisanal. Those French boulangeries and charcuteries have to be part of accredited schemes to use the term ‘artisan’. But the evidence of their authenticity is all there to see, smell and taste. And if you happen to walk past a boulangerie at 3am you’ll probably see some actual artisan boulangers crafting their pain au levain or complet.

Sadly, elsewhere the term artisan is every bit as elastic as that other marketing buzzword ‘ethical’. As well as artisanal bread, cheese and furniture (all fine I’m sure), a quick Google will highlight artisanal chocolate, cupcakes, hairdressers, chewing gum, vinyl flooring and PR (yes siree) — although for my money it’s ‘artisan software’ that takes the craft-baked biscuit.

If I’m sounding a tad sensitive, perhaps a little tiny bit John Humphreys-ish about this, it’s only out of sheer frustration that another perfectly good word that has been hijacked by marketers* and left for dead through shameless opportunism and overuse.

Just don’t even get me started on ‘iconic’.

* Apologies to 100% ethical, unfalteringly professional and non-cynical marketers everywhere