Sat 16th February 08 | 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Feast tent
hosted by | Sustainable Living Foundation & Ethical Consumer Group
With each dollar you spend, you are endorsing a company who has either a positive effect, or a negative effect on our environment, our community and human health.
You won't, however, find the social or environmental track record of the companies behind your favourite brands on the product label. Who are the multinationals that control our food? Out of the top 100 brands sold in Australian supermarkets, just 15 are Australian owned, and these are owned by just 10 companies. 85% of a typical family shop goes to foreign-owned companies. What is their track record, and what activities does your purchasing dollar endorse when you do your weekly shop? The largest global food company has been blacklisted with a boycott call for the best part of the last 30 years. How can we reclaim corporate accountability? What actions can we, the everyday consumer, take in being responsible for the impact of our purchases and their wider affect on the world?
Have your say, Make your Dollar Count!
Nick Ray
Nick Ray believes it’s a big world out there. And easy to get lost in it unless we cultivate a sense of home, a connectedness to place and to those we share it with. Nick is passionate about giving people simple everyday tools to help in living more lightly. He loves his bike, chickens, wife and daughter. Nick co-ordinates the Sustainable Living Foundation’s Directory platform, an online consumer guide providing information and alternatives to assist people in making more sustainable purchasing choices. He also facilitates the work of the Ethical Consumer Group, and in 2007 ran a series of public workshops and supermarket tours entitled “Shopping with a Conscience”, as well as the regular monthly ‘meal & movie’ nights. His bread and butter comes with his work at Green Collect, an inner city social firm who run a recycling collection service in Melbourne's CBD. For Festival 2008 he'd really like to be talking to you about urban food gardens, using your greywater effectively, and grass roots community action for change, but he realises there’s a big need for damage control, when it comes to big business. So here we are.
nick@ethical.org.au
