Guide to Labels and Certifications - Love Your Neighbor Blog

Walking down the aisle of the supermarket, I see little icons on the front of boxes and packaging. They are often green, indicating some sort of environmental friendliness. Over the past few years, I have seen new ones appear with regularity. We've done the research on these certifications and can help you navigate the broad spectrum of labels and certifications.

Why are they needed?

How do I know that someone is telling the truth? I can rely upon my knowledge of them, but that only extends as far as the depth of our relationship. What if I don't know someone very well? This is where references come in. Just like interviewing for a job or an important role, it is important to have other people, people outside of family, that can vouch for your character, work ethic, and skills. Certifications act like an outside reference. Companies use 3rd party certifications (opinions outside the family) to clearly demonstrate that what they are saying is true.

Companies that are proud of how they treat the people in their supply chain want their customers to know about their efforts. They want consumers to be able to trust what they say about their ethics, so they have their products certified by independent organizations and auditors. Words are cheap. Certifications, on the other hand, allow consumers to have more confidence in how the goods they are purchasing have been produced.

In our quest to love our neighbors as ourselves, these certifications are crucial. We have placed them into 3 categories on our website: Workers & Companies, Community & Environment, and Health & Food.

Workers & Companies

In the workers & companies category, these certifications ensure that workers are treated fairly, paid living wages, work in safe conditions, companies have a purpose beyond just profit, and other guarantees. You can find out more information about certifications that protect workers on our Workers Labels page.

Key certifications within this category include: Fair Trade, Fair Wear, GoodWeave, and others.

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Community & Environment

In the Community & Environment category, these certifications ensure that no harm comes to the communities where the goods we purchase are made, sourced, or consumed. A sad example of companies not caring about the environment, and through the manufacturing process releasing a harmful chemical that has hurt people in the communities where the factories were, is in our home state of Michigan. Michigan has been found to have the highest number of PFAS sites in the entire country. You can find out more information about certifications that protect communities in the World Labels page.

Key certifications in this category include: Forest Stewardship Council, 1% for the planet, Bluesign, Environmental Working Group, Rainforest Alliance, and many more.

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Health & Food

In the Health & Food category, these certifications ensure that people are not harmed through eating food, farming, using cleansers, applying lotions, or other everyday activities. Did you know that the European Union has banned more than 1300 chemicals from cosmetics whereas the US FDA has only banned 11? Knowing what products you can trust to not harm your family and your neighbor's family is more critical than ever! You can find more information about certifications that protect farmers, us, and everyone in between on the Wellness Labels page.

Key certifications in this category include: USDA Organic, PCO Grass-fed Certification, GreenGuard, Non-GMO Project, Environmental Working Group, Think Dirty, and others.

No certification is flawless, but they are necessary

These certifications are absolutely necessary, not because they are perfect, but because we know that public companies are by law required to maximize shareholder profit. This almost always involves abuses of labor and/or communities because laws do not fully protect our neighbors. As Christians who love others as much as we love our own families, we must ensure that God's money does no harm (Romans 13:10). We must do our best to love others more than money. These certifications are an integral piece of that puzzle.

Note: No companies, organizations, or entities sponsored, endorsed, or contributed to this post. The thoughts contained in this post are the authors alone and are merely for educational purposes. The contact information and website links for each of the entities mentioned can be found on the Certifications pages.

#Christians #Church #fairtrade #fairwage #environment #world #health #loveyourneighbor

Why Christians Need To Take Climate Change Seriously

The debate surrounding climate change is intense. Often, Christians tend to brush aside the debate in favor of discussing other topics. We should not be doing that. The potential impact upon our neighbors is too catastrophic to dismiss. If the consequences of climate change are as huge as most scientists predict, we, as Christians, are contributing to one of the greatest abuses of the poor that the world has ever known.

Visualization created by Alexander Radke

Climate Change Will Disproportionately Affect The Poor

I focus on the poor because they will inevitably bear the brunt of the impact. They will not have the resources to relocate, they will not have the insurance needed to cover their losses when their houses are swept away by rising seas, they will not have the technology to overcome the droughts, they will not be able to adapt quickly to the changes in agricultural conditions. Like any environmental disaster, it is always the poor who fare worse.

A chart from The Economist showing that poorer countries will face more variability of climate than developed countries.

The Poor Are Not The Cause, But Will Bear The Effects

What is interesting about this potential situation is that the vast majority of what may be causing the climate to change is being created by or for the rich. The poor do not consume as much per capita in food, housing, heating and cooling, travel, and stuff as the rich. If climate change is caused by humans, the poor will suffer a catastrophe forced upon them by the rich. It will not be of their own doing.

Rapid, Climate-Informed Development Needed to Keep Climate Change from Pushing More than 100 Million People into Poverty by 2030 - The World Bank

Are We Causing Climate Change?

The climate change debate often hinges upon whether carbon has the ability to be the greenhouse cause that many scientists say it is. I am not going to focus on that because there are much smarter people than I who are able to argue both sides. What I am going to comment on is that I believe climate change is real and it is happening already. Regardless of what the source is, something extraordinary is starting.

https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/4/graphic-dramatic-glacier-melt/

I recently read an article, "Rapidly receding Arctic Canada glaciers revealing landscapes continuously ice-covered for more than 40,000 years." published in Nature Communications 10, Article 445 (2019). This article covered the research from a team of scientists studying the glaciers on Baffin Island in Canada. One of the unique features of these glaciers was that they had soil with plants growing at the time when the glaciers were formed. Since the glaciers have melted to a point never before seen, these plants have been uncovered. The team measured the age of these plants, and the geological formations around them, and determined that the plants were more than 40,000 years old. You can read more about the scientist's techniques here. What this means is that this glacier has been covering the spots where the plants were sampled for more than 40,000 years. Many people who disagree with climate change say that the earth goes through normal fluctuations in temperature and our weather goes through natural ups and downs. Something that has not changed for more than 40,000 years seems like we may be facing a situation that is outside of the "normal" temperature fluctuations, in my opinion.

Is It Okay To Gamble On Our Neighbor's Safety?

We, as Christians, need to take climate change seriously because it is real. It is happening, and we may be a huge contributor to it. In doing so, we may be perpetrators of a crime that displaces millions, negatively affects the lives of billions, and causes harm to the least of these.

To a certain extent, if we do nothing to change our lifestyles, we are gambling with the lives of the poor. How does this align with loving our neighbor as ourselves? If there was a 50/50 chance that your brother, sister, mom, would lose their home, or suffer extreme poverty due to droughts or famine, would you take that bet? What if there was only a 10% chance that your father could lose his job? What if there was only a 5% chance that climate change was being caused by us and that because of it, your son would not be able to feed his family later this century, would you bet that it's not real and we don't need to change how we are doing things? My personal belief is that there is a real possibility that I am contributing to climate change. Based upon this, I am not going to risk my neighbor's safety. I have to change. It is a spiritual imperative. I haven't figured out exactly how to change everything, but we as a family are changing. We will share what we are doing and why in future posts.

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Note: No company, entity, or person mentioned in this post endorsed, sponsored, or approved of the content in this post. The post is the author's opinions alone.

#climatechange #Christians #loveyourneighbor

6 Step Guide to Ethical Shopping

We have to make purchase decisions almost every day. That's a lot of decisions to make. Here is a 6 step guide to making ethical purchases that will love your neighbor.

Every Purchase Matters.

Love Your Neighbor Blog's 6 step guide to Ethical Purchasing.

1) Look for strong labels: Buy FairTrade, FairWear, Organic, Global Organic Textile Standard, Bluesign, UTZ Certified, Rainforest Alliance Certified, NonGMO, etc.

If the purchase you are considering ensures the workers (garment workers, farmers, factory workers, etc.) a fair, living wage, and it will limit the negative impact on communities because of environmental damage and polluition, this is likely a purchase that loves your neighbor.

As consumers, we must not these things lightly. Even though a brand may have a sustainability goal or worker's condition 'code of conduct', this does not guarantee much and often is an empty promise. In fact, most American textile companies who publicly share 'codes of conduct' for safe and healthy working conditions do not welcome or require third party review for the conditions in the factories they source from.

If you want to see a company who does guarantee a fair wage and sustainability, check out Dr. Bronner's or Patagonia.

Our guideline is: If you can't find information about who made their products and under what circumstances they made the product, chances are that company is hiding something ugly. Too often, products are found out to be worse than we could imagine. Let's take our neighbor's safety and well being seriously.

2) Buy something that meets most of the criteria in #1.

When you can't find something that meets all of the perfect criteria, endeavor to find something that is very, very close. It is worth your time to do the research. Understand what each label guarantees, and what its shortcomings could be. So much is at stake! Act as though your life depends on it - because someone's life does depend on it.

Don't give up or give in if you can't find something. Don't give in to discouragement when you have to make compromises. Use resources such as the Think Dirty app. Search using the GOTS search tool. Check out the other tools in our Dig Deeper section. Look for the certifications that protect the worker, the world, and your neighbor's wellness.

3) Buy used.

Embrace garage and estate sales! Get familiar with the resale and consignment shops (especially for fast growing children)! We use eBay all the time. Maybe something can't be found that is produced in a completely ethical way, (a baby monitor, for example!). Rather than giving up and just buying something new, try to use something that has already been created. It saves the item from going into the trash, gives the product a new life, and saves the environment from the destructive by-products of having to manufacture a new one.

Even better than your typical resale shop or online marketplace, there are specific companies that sell used versions of their products that were also sustainably produced, like Patagonia's WornWear. This way, you are getting an ethically produced product AND your impact is reduced because it has already been manufactured.

Its important to note that what is the most sustainable and most ethical may not always be universally agreed upon. Take a Nike hoodie from a resale shop, for example. Its good for the environment to reuse this item. However, if you care about the working conditions of garment artists worldwide who produce Nike items, you may not want to put a Nike symbol on your chest.

The moral of the story is, buying used is a great tool in the shopping arsenal. But its not the end-all be-all. There are still some negatives to consider. Be thoughtful about the products that you buy new vs. what you buy used. Put research, mindfulness and prayer behind what you do to seek the best option.

4) Don't buy anything! Creatively meet the need another way. Repurpose, rearrange, borrow....

I recently had an experience where I was looking to buy something at Home Depot for my house. Upon inspecting some of my options and finding that they were all made in China and included no labeling or information about how they were produced, I left the store empty handed. Inspired by MacGyver, I searched my garage and wound up repurposing something that was just laying around to do exactly what was needed. I'm now getting into the habit of asking myself things like:

• Is this something I can borrow?

• Do I already haves something that could serve this purpose?

• What could I use to perform this function that I already own?

It is also important to consider the need for the product in the first place. Do I really need that hamburger shaper? (Couldn't I just use a cup?) Do I really need another black dress? (No one will really notice if I wear one I already have!) Do I really need that cord organizer? (Maybe the real problem is that I have too many appliances in one spot.) There are so many purchases that end up in a junk drawer, storage container, are duplicates of what we already don't use, or that solve A problem, but not the REAL problem. (Additionally, the by-products from the production of that plastic thing could really hurt my neighbor who made it. )

A cute reading tent made with 4 poles of different origins, left over scrap cord, and an old used curtain. You never know what you can re-use or repurpose into something great.

5) Make it yourself from sustainable materials or scrap.

When I can't guarantee that the worker was paid a living wage, I stop and think about whether I could make the item myself. For example, my toddler's physical therapist recommended a scooter for her to help with hamstring development. After searching resale shops and still not feeling good about our options, I decided to just make one. I bought some wood and a few coasters that were made in the USA and made my own. This was a good option to avoid another plastic item for my daughter.

6) Ensure that your purchase is made in a country with enforced labor laws, minimum wages, healthcare, etc.

In our global marketplace, goods are often not produced in the country we live in. When we can't certify the labor standards for a product because all it says on the label is "Made in China", we should think about abstain from purchasing that product. It would be better to find a product that says, "Made in USA", "Made in Germany", or "Made in Sweden", etc. These countries are known to have enforced labor laws, minimum wages, and some form of healthcare system. We should opt to support companies that produce their goods in these locations as an alternative to a FairTrade certification.

#fairtrade #fairwage #Christians #sustainable #purchases #imadeyourclothes #loveyourneighbor

No company mentioned in this post contributed, supported, or endorsed any part of this post. The content and opinions are the author's alone and are his attempt to help everyone purchase better.

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