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Do you really care? Ethical Valentine’s Day gifts

February 4, 2016 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Valentines Day 2016Is it easy buying someone a Valentine’s Day gift? You may well be very nervous.

There’s quite a bit to think about. If you buy something too expensive then you risk embarrassing them or coming on too strong. If you buy something too cheap then you look cheap. You might also want to avoid buying something commercial and mainstream. How much thought would have gone into that?

When it comes to Valentine’s Day you’ll certainly want to avoid any gifts that are associated with cruelty, wars or exploitation. That’s tough, right? How many shops do you know who absolutely stick to 100% ethical items? Many chain stores these days don’t even know where their clothes or food comes from.

It may well be worth checking out the Valentine’s Day collection at the Ethical Superstore. There are over 100 products here, a range of prices, and lots of good ideas. You can browse jewellery, skin care, scented candles and even organic wine.

Valentine’s Day gift ideas

iq-superfood-chocolateHere’s some suggestions to help begin your research.

  • iQ Superfood Chocolate; dairy free, gluten free, wheat free, vegan, nut free and organic! Bring it!
  • Hand poured soy candle; Egyptian fig scented candle, looks like a lovely owl and handmade
  • Green People Body Care; buying this helps support a charity, no animal testing, fair trade, vegan safe and organic. Oh yeah!
  • Burts Bees Essentials; vegetarian safe, free from Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and Paraben free.
  • Wilby Drayton handbag; Made in the UK, vegan safe and with eco-friendly delivery.

Think of all that karma! Not to mention finding a great Valentine’s Day gift.

In Pure Spirit

What tips do you have for finding a good, thoughtful, Valentine’s Day present?

Chipotle’s spookily good The Scarecow animation

September 14, 2013 by Andrew Leave a Comment

I think of Chipotle has a Mexican sauce made from smoked chilli. However, it’s a big resturant chain in the States and there Chipotle sells burritos. They must be confident of their green creds because they’re really on the attack against mass produced foods in this wonderful animation called The Scarecrow.

There’s a game that goes with the film. You can download it from Apple’s App Store. No sign of an Android alternative.

The Scarecrow was made for Chipotle by the award winning Moonbot Studios. The song in it as a remake of “Pure Imagination” which comes from the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The singer? The legendary Fiona Apple.

In Pure Spirit

What do you make of this film? Is this exactly the right sort of message Chipotle should be sending and isn’t his a great way to engage with people? Or do you disagree? Is this just greenwashing. Does Chipotle have a lot to improve in their own company before they start preaching to others?

Natoora relaunch site and hand out £50 (@natooracouk)

October 19, 2009 by Andrew Leave a Comment

The online farmers’ market Natoora has redesigned and relaunched its website.

To mark the occasion they’re giving new customers £50 off, there are conditions, you need to use the code Natoora50 before 15th November and can claim here*.

The new site looks slick and trustworthy. Natoora is already well known to ethical eaters and it seems that the brand is looking to grow into the corporate area with this new look and feel – perhaps targeting SMEs or even blue chips with the idea of sourcing good, fresh food for their employees.

If you’re not familiar with Natoora then it’s a simple walkthrough. Select from a range of top quality food and have it delivered to you. It’s not a supermarket. It’s a collective of farmers and that’s what makes it special.

It would be wrong to dismiss Natoora because of their strong connections with farmer communities. They mean to get their digital marketing exactly right. For a start, they run an affiliate program (which In Pure Spirit is a member of; you’ll see the links in this post) and they’ve done a pretty good job of the SEO on the new site. The 301 redirect from their homepage to /shop/ is a hiccup but we can assume it was necessary. They’ve tried their best with the URLs, they’re short-ish, a nod towards keywords but I wish they had hidden the .html elements as they’ll have a migration challenge on their next redesign. There’s the missing robots.txt file with the awkward redirect to the homepage too.

The site’s backlink profile looks healthy due to the foodie blogs who happily link to one another. There’s perhaps just the suggestion of an aggressive past with suspect pages like this one and rather a lot of ice cream pages.

Natoora also runs a blog* of their own, have it on the right domain and brand it differently. They’re on Twitter as well and that’s ideal if you want to flirt with foodies, but they’ve not been there long and could do with more followers (tell them @inpurespirit said hi).

In Pure Spirit

What do you think of Natoora’s new site? Do you like it? Do you like it enough to shop there?

Disclaimer: Links marked with a star(*) are revenue links.

Tooth fairy tooth pouch

June 15, 2009 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Tooth fairy pouch
Tooth fairy pouch*

The origin of the tooth fairy myth is not clear but some believe it is an adaptation of “La Bonne petite Souris” a French fairy tale in which a mouse helps a good queen by hiding under the pillow of an evil King, sneaking out at night and knocking his teeth out.

In fact, the Spanish have the tradition of a the tooth mouse, in Italy tooth fairy and small mouse are interchangeable and in Scotland there are stories of a white fairy rat which buys teeth with coins.

The modern story is that children who loose teeth should place them under their pillow and there is a chance the tooth fairy will visit in the night. The tooth fairy collects the teeth and leaves behind a coin instead.

It is likely that the story is told and re-told as it is a handy way to reassure children who have lost a tooth.

Tooth fairy tooth pouch

The toot fairy tooth pouch is a simple concept; a pretty bag in which to place the tooth. This makes the tooth / coin switch for the parent much more convenient as it makes it easier to find the tooth in the child’s bed.

Ectopia currently sell tooth fairy tooth pouches*.

In Pure Spirit

Have you re-told and re-used the story of the tooth fairy?

Caveat: Links marked with an asterix(*) are revenue links.

Kenco signs ad deal with Marie Claire, Essentials and Ideal Home magazine to promote ethical branding

June 1, 2009 by Andrew 1 Comment

Kenco coffee.
Image via Wikipedia

Kenco coffee has entered into a six figure ad deal with IPC to run a marketing campaign across four of the publisher’s magazines. Marie Claire, Essentials, Ideal Home and woman&home magazines will be used by the coffee company to promote the brand’s association with the Rainforest Alliance.

The three month deal will try and capitalise on the readership demographic of each magazine – such as “me-time”, “thinking time” and “catching up with friends” themes.

The coffee company will also pay for a “special paper mechanic” designed to bookmark the tailored advertising messages once readers open them up.

The campaign, due to start in July, was brokered by the traditional advertising agency Starcom MediaVest and IPC Southbank.

The deal comes as coffee brands are engaging advertising agencies to push back against the green positioning of the supermarkets’ own brands. In April Anne MacCaig announced a rebranding of CafeDirect after a 5% dip of YoY sales.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Is this money well spent by Kenco or would they have been better off engaging in social media?

Do you consider Kenco an ethical and green brand?

Earth Day recycling tip: Get paid for recycling your old mobile

April 22, 2009 by Andrew 1 Comment

Happy Earth Day. Earth Day is an event designed to raise awareness of the myriad of ecological dangers our planet, our home, currently faces. If you wish to join this American charity then you can do so online.

You don’t need to be in America in order to help promote Earth Day or save the planet. Here’s a tip for United Kingdom residents.

You can turn your old phone into cash and in doing so help recycle it in an environmentally friendly way. Two cash for old phone companies to consider are:

  • envirofone.com*
  • Earth Mobile*

Each of these two programs functions in a similar way; the worth of the phone you’re trading in depends on the make and model. Very old phones might be worth only £5 but newer or more expensive models are worth over £100. At the time of posting Earth Mobile is offering £200 to recycle the 16GB 3G iPhone.

In Pure Spirit

What are you doing to help promote Earth Day? Do you think it comes awfully close to the WWF’s Earth Hour which persuaded many cities around the globe to turn their lights off for an hour?

Have you used either of these two sites before? What are your observations? Would you recommend them?

* Caveat : In Pure Spirit makes revenue from marked affiliate links.

Extinction Sucks: Asiatic Black Bears

April 17, 2009 by Andrew Leave a Comment

This week’s Extinction Sucks episode from WWF’s pioneering web video features Ashleigh Young and Aleisha Caruso raising awareness of the plight of Asiatic Black Bears.

In parts of South East Asia, these bears are milked for their bile. The bear bile is believed to be a cure for fever. It is found in everything from tea to toothpaste. Despite how widespread the practice has been and still seems to be – there’s no proven benefit.

There are synthetic alternatives to the bile. The bear bile milking practice has only just been outlawed in Vietnam.

Bears are taken as cubs from the wild and kept in cages until they’re 1 or 2 years old. The young bears are then milked once or twice a week.

The hero charities of this Extinction Sucks episode are Free the Bears and Traffic.

Free the Bears is a charity which tries to find sanctuaries for rescued bears. These bears can never go back to the wild so need natural enclosures. Free the Bears is run by Mary Hutton who features in this episode.

Ashleigh and Aleisha plan a bear fundraiser so Free the Bears can buy robust toys for the bears to play with and try and redevelop their natural rummaging skills.

Dare-for-a-Bear contest to raise funds which involve Afro-Caribbean dance contest.

They then travel on to Vietnam, speak to Sulma Warne of Traffic, and try to understand the cultural atmosphere which would allow bear bile milking to persist and for bears to be cruelly kept in tiny cages.

In Pure Spirit

If you’d like to find out more about helping bears then you can read about them at WWF’s Panda.org.

Cafedirect to fight back against supermarket fairtrade brands

April 15, 2009 by Andrew Leave a Comment

cafedirect_logoCafedirect says its birth came after the collapse of the International Coffee Agreement in 1989. The fairtrade brand now works with 39 grower organisations, in 13 developing countries and with more than 260,000 farmers.

Tea-direct and Cocodirect, sub-brands for tea and coco products, are expected to come under the Cafeedirect brand in a shakeup being led by CEO Anne MacCaig and comes after a 5% drop in year-on-year sales.

Cafedirect spends £2m in the UK with marketing and branding agency Albion.

The fairtrade brand will also introduce a new design and branding image in May that was designed by Carter Wong.  The new packs each feature signatures from their grower partners and each one has their own seal of approval.

Each pack will also show the tools used by the growers to produce the product. While the pack designs will be new Cafedirect stress that the product remains the same.

In Pure Spirit

What do you think? Should fairtrade companies like Cafedirect spend as much as £2m on advertising? Isn’t advertising necessary in order to persuade the public to adopt fairtrade products?

Do you think the Fairtrade Foundation accredited tea and coffee lines sold by the supermarkets is a good thing for fairtrade or not?

Microsoft and Gnomedex launch Code for Green

April 15, 2009 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Best Photo of Gnomedex 6.0
Image by Josh Bancroft via Flickr

Microsoft’s Live Search team has joined up with Gnomedex to sponsor a green themed coding contest. They hope that Code for Green will make a difference to both the economy and ecology. As the Live Search blog points out Green = Money and Green = Environment.

Web-based applications need to use the Live Search API (Microsoft wants  to promote their search engine) and need to be submitted to willcodeforgreen.gnomedex.com come June the 1st.  They must use the Live Search API but are free to use other non-Microsoft products.

The web-applications should follow into two different categories;

  • To help people cope with the worsening global economy (economy category)
  • To help people improve the ecology of the planet (ecology category)

Once submitted anyone can vote for their favourite web-applications until August the 12th.

The winners of each of the two categories will pick up $10,000 and a Bizspark memebership. Three finalists get $3,000 each.

In Pure Spirit

Is this Microsoft putting their cash behind a good cause?

Or is this Microsoft trying to associate their search engine with a green cause?

Babipur – ethical shopping for babies

April 14, 2009 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Babipur is an eCommerce site with a clear goal – to sell baby clothes and accessories which are both ethical and fair trade.

Lots of parents are familiar with the washable nappy debate – do you rise to the challenge of washing and cleaning reusable nappies or take the environmentally damaging disposable nappy approach? Not only does Babipur help should you decide to take the green but smelly option the site offers a host of other organic and ethical options in other areas of your baby’s life.

Babipur’s organic baby essentials section covers a wide range of clothes. The key ingredient here is the organic cotton used in the items. The cotton comes from fair trade farms so you know the family which grew and harvested the soft cotton from the fields also has a future to look forward too.

There is also a range of ethical baby shoes which make use of natural sheepskin in hand made ‘Cwitches’ and hand-knitted baby booties.

Whereas the site is no Amazon in terms of data mining Babipur does share a top ten bestseller list so you can see what other parents have been buying. At the time of this post, the knitted vegetable rattles are most popular and a roll of 100 biodegradable nappy liners are in second place.

In Pure Spirit

Do you think the internet enables worthy niche sites like Babipur to try and carve out some market share from the superstores and giant retailers?  Or would we have shops like this in a High Street shopping society?

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