No Logo and Consuming Responsibly

Over at grrl meets world, Becky is finishing up No Logo and suffering some angst about her shopping habits:

Personally, I love buying clothes at Old Navy. I’m a sucker for a Toffee Nut Latte at Starbucks, ordered as pretensiously as I can. But now I don’t think I can go to these places and order/shop the same way again.

I read No Logo a few years ago, and I remember thinking that it was compelling but too long. Fast Food Nation had humbler aspirations, but was a better read. Regardless, I was writing a response on Becky’s site, but it got really long, so I decided to dump it here.

I’m faced with similar shopping dilemmas. I treat them the same way I do eating. I don’t eat red meat, both for health reasons and because, when I made the decision, it was a lot harder to get organic beef. I don’t want to participate in a cruel factory farm system, so I only eat free-range chicken and non-farmed fish. Since reading Fast Food Nation, I almost never go to McDonalds or other major fastfood franchises. I instinctively avoid Starbucks. I don’t drink coffee or tea anyway, so it’s only meetings or the occasional urge for hot chocolate that bring me there. When tempted, I try to go to independent coffee shops.

Whenever possible, I buy clothes that are manufactured in Canada. That’s tricky sometimes, (and this may be more information than you need) but all my underwear and socks come from Canadian manufacturers (mostly this fine ginch-maker in Truro, Nova Scotia). With the exception, of course, of my recent, experimental 10Socks purchase. I get my outdoors and much of my casual wear at MEC, a responsible vendor. The next time I buy a suit, I’ll have one made by a local tailor. It will cost me more, but I’m not exploiting anyone and, hey, it’ll look better.

Do I still buy stuff manufactured in sweatshops? Probably. Is it simpler because I’m male and have the fashion sense of a Etruscan shrew? Definitely. Could I do better? Absolutely.

Ultimately, though, it’s about shopping responsibly and good consumer karma. The buying decisions I’ve described haven’t taken much effort on my part, but I can feel better about not exploiting the Third World and keeping my money in Canada. My approach is pretty moderate, but that’s the way of the world. Like all decisions that require sacrificing the now for the long view, we’re going to have to accept some compromise.

More than Ms. Klein, I should credit my brother Kevin with opening up my eyes to these issues. He’s got better consumer karma than anyone else I know, but then he’s pretty ascetic.