The ethical quadrilemma

If you float around the lifestyle section of YouTube, you will eventually encounter videos about ethical and sustainable consumption, with titles like:

• “What’s in my zero waste bag”

• “What I eat in a day - vegan”

• “Come thrift shopping with me”

Without fail, each video will have comments disparaging the Youtuber for being not quite ethical enough.*

• “Your handbag is leather? That’s disgusting. Only vegan handbags are ethical.”

• “Why are you using so much plastic packaging when cooking? All that plastic goes straight into the oceans.”

• “Actually, one cotton produce bag takes the same amount of resources to make as 20,000 plastic bags, so you’re being less sustainable.”

Maybe the Youtubers, sharing videos about what being ethical means to them, are completely in the right. Maybe the commenters see the opportunity to influence the influencers to be better people. Maybe they’re both completely wrong, and completely right, all at the same time.

What does it mean to be ethical?

Or, on a similar note, what does it mean to be sustainable?

For zero waste warriors, this means minimising the amount of objects they put into landfill every week. The question they ask is, “What happens to this object after I am done with it?” They will try to reuse things as much as possible, and purchase items that will make it easier to reuse - like cotton produce bags and bamboo cutlery. They’ll avoid polyester and acrylic clothing to prevent microplastics from being flushed out of their washing machine and into the waterways.

The question that pure zero waste warriors do not ask is “What happened to this object before I obtained it?” Cotton plants consume vast quantities of water. Reusable bamboo forks and knives may have been produced in terrible working conditions using toxic chemicals that pollute rivers. Wool jumpers and leather handbags require sheep to have their tails docked and cows to die.

Maybe the zero waste warrior can try being a fair trade trader, and instead ask, “Did this object cause harm to other human beings” before making a purchasing decision. They can end up buying a cutlery set from the Oxfam fair trade store - and determinedly ignore all the airmiles that cutlery set travelled to get from Cambodia to the downtown store.**

They can try being plant based, and ask, “Did this object cause harm to other animals?” They’ll replace their leather shoes with plastic shoes that smell like bubblegum. They’ll also stop bringing their metal tiffins to the butchers for chicken pieces because they’ve started buying prepackaged tempeh. And although they feel a bit more virtuous about the lives they’ve avoided killing, they’ll still feel a little bit guilty every week when they find they cannot recycle soft plastics. Two years down the line, the plastic shoes will develop an irreparable tear and they will keep the broken shoes for another two years to avoid putting it in the bin.***

They can try being minimalist, and ask, “Do I really need this object?” They’ll strive to buy nothing, and if they do, they’ll get it second hand. And then when the occasion comes when they absolutely need to buy something new, they’ll fall over dead from the sheer effort of navigating the quadrilemma of how to be an ethical consumer.

What should we do?

Like everything else in life, there is no single right answer. The only way to move forward is to do what is right by you. Choose what is most important to you, and what is feasible for you to do. Don’t let guilt paralyse you if you aren’t able to meet all your own expectations for yourself. And don’t use the different aspects of ethical consumerism to guilt other people and shut them down.

For me, being ethical means using Onya bags for my produce, because that’s what I already own. They’re not compostable, but they’re made of recycled plastic bottles at least. It means buying linen shirts from the op shop, but also polyester blazers when they’re too pretty to pass up. I still eat meat, but I try to buy meat from sources that I think treat their animals well. It costs a lot more, but that just means I end up eating less meat. I knit with wool because I’m a yarn snob. And I still use zip lock bags because they’re just too useful, but I wash and reuse them. Plastic bags multiply in the bottom kitchen drawer because my husband accumulates them when I’m not looking. When I want to take another step on the ethical journey, I’ll do it when I’m ready.

I’m not perfect, but that’s okay. I’m still doing better than I was five years ago.

*Ashley from Best Dressed makes a really good point about these comments. They’re almost exclusively posted on videos by female Youtubers, as if people feel it is more acceptable to police women and their actions and force them to minimise their presence on the earth. I popped a link to her video in the first sentence so you can listen to her eloquent self explain the theory.

**They can then make their next purchase online to save on transport pollution, then feel guilty again when they hear that Amazon staff have been committing suicide over working conditions.

***I did this with my pink Vivienne Westwood X Melissa jelly loafers. They were uncomfortable and I rarely wore them. After they tore right down the side, I stitched the tear together and continued to not wear the shoes for another few years. Moving overseas forced me to finally let them go… into landfill.