2015 edit: Since this post Seasalt have sadly discontinued their ethical menswear line, but you might find this up-to-date guide to ethical men’s clothing companies useful.
I’ve done a few posts on fashion, but none on menswear yet, so I thought I’d rectify this right now with a post on Cornish based ethical clothing company – Seasalt. I’m not aware of many ethical retailers for men, but Seasalt are leading the way: they have quite impressive ethical credentials, and have won a few sustainability awards.
And for another gold star, they’ve been increasing the amount of clothing they sell that is made in their local area by small scale producers, through their Locally Made project. This helps supports and keep alive the remaining maritime textile traditions and other small scale manufacturing in Cornwall. They’ve also branched out to other small-scale suppliers from other coastal areas around the UK & Ireland too, and aim to have at least 10% of their stock ‘locally’ made by next year.
Seasalt’s Menswear focus is on classic items that don’t date, so expect lots of heritage items:
Yes, the Seasalt Menswear clothes aren’t cheap, but they’re built to last – the quality workmanship and use of high quality materials means you’ll get many, many, many wears out of their clothing.
Seasalt also do pretty nice clothes for ladies – think breton stripes and easy to wear dresses and you’re there.
If you have any recommendations for ethical men’s clothing then do let me know in the comments below!
I have an uneasy relationship with Google, and have been on a hunt for alternative search engines.
Yes, Google is great at finding everything you need to know in a flash, but here’s the thing: Google, in turns knows everything about you. Google will know if you’re looking for a job; if you’ve lost your job; if you think you might be pregnant; if you think you might be in labour; if you’re ill; if you’re looking to move house; if you fancy going out for a meal or the cinema this evening; when and where you’re going on holiday; your interests and hobbies; and perhaps some things you’d rather not share with even your closest friends (say, for example, if you discovered your other half has a thing for wearing ladies underwear chances are Google would know about it first!).
Being such a global giant, I don’t feel at ease with Google knowing so much about me. Who knows what it does with my data, or what it can do in the future with it. Coupled with Google’s well documented tax avoidance, well this was the impetus for looking out for some alternative search engines more ethical than Google.
Alternative Search Engines – Ecosia
In my search for alternative search engines I came across Ecosia – a green search engine that donates 80% of it’s revenue to the WWF”s rainforest project, aimed at conserving the Amazonian rainforest:
Ecosia is powered by Bing and Yahoo, which although is not brilliant, as Microsoft who own Bing have also been avoiding paying tax, the fundraising element of Ecosia gives it the ethical edge over Google.
Ecosia works just like Google – search for what you want, and as well as your search results you’ll be presented with relevant adverts based on your search terms. If you click on a sponsored link the sponsoring company pays Bing or Yahoo for the click. The difference is that then Bing or Yahoo gives the bigger chunk of that money to Ecosia, and Ecosia donates at least 80% of this income to support the WWF. Surfing with a conscience, if you will. In it’s first year Ecosia was able to donate USD $164,000 to the WWF, which is not an insignificant sum of money.
2015 Edit: Ecosia now no longer donate to the WWF, instead 80% of profits are invested in tree planting programmes.
Ecosia and I didn’t get off to a good start. To test it out, the first thing I searched for was “Moral Fibres”. This search didn’t show up this webpage, which isn’t exactly ideal. I wasn’t familiar with using Bing or Yahoo, so I gave them a go and a search on both for “Moral Fibres” showed up this webpage. As Ecosia is powered by both Bing and Yahoo, I’m not sure why this would be the case. I didn’t want to write off Ecosia right away, so I then looked for information on a topic rather than looking for a specific web page. Thankfully this search yielded good results.
Alternative Search Engines – DuckDuckGo
I wondered if there were any other alternative search engines out there not tainted by tax avoidance. A bit more searching uncovered DuckDuckGo – a search engine that claims not to track you or collect information about you:
As DuckDuckGo doesn’t store your previous searches and is forced to keep its focus purely on its search function, rather than advertising it seems like a fairly smart and innocuous choice for web searching. And it’s search function is pretty good too – I searched for Moral Fibres and my site and my Twitter account came up as the top two results which I was pretty pleased about!
So, as far as alternative search engines go, I found Ecosia good for looking for general information, great for the environment, but not so hot for looking for specific web pages or if you want to use a website not tainted by tax avoidance. I might adopt a two-pronged approach to search engines – using Ecosia for general web searches (where, to be honest, I’d be much more inclined to click on sponsored search results) and using DuckDuckGo (which doesn’t collect information about you) for looking for specific web pages (where I would be unlikely to click on sponsored search results anyway).
Have you used Ecosia or DuckDuckGo? What did you think? Or are there any other alternative search engines that you recommend? I’m all ears!
I'm Wendy and welcome to Moral Fibres, a green lifestyle blog. I believe that sustainable living should be hip, not hippie. Here you'll find all sorts of easy hints and tips here for living a greener life that won't compromise your sense of style. As well as the blog I've also written a book on natural cleaning - Fresh Clean Home is out now! Want to know more? Check out the about page for more information or explore the archives using the category tabs above. Moral Fibres is always free to read. If you want to support the site's running costs you can buy me a coffee. Say hello at moralfibres@gmail.com
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