What would your ideal ethical alternatives site look like?

In case you missed it: we’re working on building a site for people to share and discover ethical alternatives to products and services. But we don’t just want to crowdsource information from the community - we also want you to help us design a site that suits your needs.

Currently, ethical.net is just a simple, placeholder blog template. But we want to know - would your ideal site for finding ethical alternatives look like?

A Product Hunt, but for sustainability? A slicker version of Ethical Consumer? A more comprehensive GoodOnYou? Or are you imagining something completely different?

Have your say below!

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While this is a place for everyone to share their ideas, I feel it’s useful for the few of us who are directly involved in the project to comment as well.

For me, the bigger vision for the project would be an Ethipedia for ethical companies, products, services, activities, and so on. A community-driven, inclusive, decentralised, constantly evolving educational platform where anyone can share their knowledge and their experience with the sole aspiration of contributing to a fairer future for the society and the earth.

And while this feels like a distantly achievable project, my favourite idea of a minimum viable product is a browser extension that suggests ethical alternatives (for products, shops, and) when we are browsing mainstream websites like google, amazon, ebay, etc. Pretty much like DoneGood (and probably others too) but aimed at people in the UK, and offering not only product alternatives, but also ideas on how to fix things (ie: suggestions on how and where to fix a particular type of smartphone, in case we are searching for a new one).

What we need for this: build and maintain a comprehensive database of ethical shops and ideas, and create a basic recommendations algorithm, which we can constantly improve and refine.

The database can be repurposed as a browsable list on the website, and as a mobile app for different platforms.

One thing that we need to be very careful of is how we frame things, so they don’t burden people as extra sources of guilt, which in turn can lead to or increase the risk for ethical “fatigue” or burnout. We can always remind our readers that there is no such thing as being an “ethical person”, but rather learning how to be as ethical as one can in this present moment.

It’s a case of discovering and contemplating our real values, rather than obeying some external rules, more like the North Star, and not like the 10 Commandments. :slight_smile:

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I know I’m a year and a half late by replying to this thread now, but the above would be pretty amazing!!

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Hi, I’m just checking out the site for the first time! (previously followed switching.social which now redirects here). I noticed a few design issues I wanted to report. Looks like the site is running wordpress, but I didn’t see any links to the source of the theme where I could contribute a fix - that might be something to consider.

Anyway, when scrolling, the header overlaps the content and has no background so this happens on the homepage (I’m using FF 88)

Hope that helps!

Also when browsing the topics, the horizontal space isn’t utilized very well which makes the options harder to browse/read, perhaps that could be improved!

I think the header menu overlap is a pretty recent bug, I just noticed it today in FF and Chrome but hadn’t seen it before. So, I’m going to assume they are making some CSS changes that have gone a bit temporarily wrong.

The empty space while browsing directory I can’t reproduce, I have directory items flowing across into columns nicely on every browser at all reasonable screen resolutions.

Empty space issue seems to happen at 1280 width (which is the scaled resolution on my 13" laptop). A little wider and it’s fine, a little narrower and the nav disappears into the hamburger menu and everything flows fine. I would bet that’s a pretty common display size
¯_(ツ)_/¯

Hey, thanks for letting us know. They should be fixed by now :slight_smile:

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I am only new to ethical.net so I hope my suggestion below is not out of scope or already covered somewhere else on this site.
I suggest it would be very important and useful if this forum could provide a space where we could contribute to a dialogue on the whole range of ethical ideas, values and principles. A thoughtful and considerate exchange on these concepts can help educate all of us on how to live an ethical life generally as well as framing our attitude to how much we consume and in choosing ethical products and services. Can a separate category possibly be set up to gather these ideas?

Hey Tony, yes, have a look at these two What do you mean by "ethical"? and Animals, Ethics, and Re-Thinking Christianity. There may be more similar threads. As a community member you can start another topic closer to your interests if you want to :slight_smile: Let me know if you encounter problems setting this up. Thanks!

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Wouldn’t most of that fit into the ‘general’ or ‘ethical living’ categories?

I come back to ethical.net a lot in part thanks to the clean, simple accessible design. What is really missing for me is a more clear process of recommending new tools with a more transparent criteria of admission. More indicators, such as popularity metrics, would help to relate the various tools. How about a score or ranking, so that not only just the “most” ethical tools are showcased, but improvement potential is also shown for those that fall somewhat short of the mark? Most of all, I wish for open access to the database, so that we could build upon what you have started here (with the proper attribution and link-backs of course!) Thank you.

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Thanks for the useful feedback. We’re in the process of revamping the platform so all suggestions from our users are more than welcome :slight_smile:

Exciting! Any timeline for the revamp?

Hopefully next year :slight_smile:

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