Site navigation

• Help | 
• Regions | 
• Contact us | 
• My email updates | 
• Sitemap

• Home
• Join
• News
• Members
• About us
• Benefits
• Campaigns
• Get active
• At work
• Equality
• Resources
• UNISONTV

• Back to Quick Links [.]

The thought - and reality - of Christmas shopping fills most of us with dread. And as companies bombard us with adverts, it's getting even trickier to shop without buying wholeheartedly into the 21st century's all-pervasive consumer culture. Amanda Kendal reports

Xmas shopping with a conscience

It's that time of year again. Children are getting excited as advertisers pummel them with images of the latest must-have toys, the shelves of your local supermarket have been taken over by everything from brightly packaged jars of olives to créme brulé blowtorches and you've already lost track of how many times you've heard 'White Christmas' this week.

For most of us, the weeks before Christmas mean the annual battle to find the right gift for our families and friends. We all want to treat those we love, but do we necessarily want to buy into consumer culture?

And it can be an even more complicated process when you’re trying to shop with a conscience.

What can you do when you want to bring Christmas back down to earth without losing the festivity and turning like a right old Scrooge?

Let's see if our guide to Christmas gifts can't take some of the strain out of the next few weeks.

Many voluntary and campaigning organisations offer products, not only as a way of increasing knowledge of their logo or campaign slogans, but also as a way of earning valuable income. And for you the consumer, it's a great way to shop with your conscience intact.

And of course, if you are able to order online, not only does it make your shopping trip less onerous, it also cuts down on costs such as posting catalogues, while also reducing the amount of paper used.

As part of its commitment to human rights, UNISON supports a number of groups, including the Burma Campaign UK. Their website has a range of publications available about Burma’s history and the liberation struggle, together with items like t-shirts bearing the word ‘freedom’ in Burmese script.

UNISON also supports WaterAid, a group that helps “communities in Africa and Asia help themselves to the precious gift of safe water”. They have an online shop with a variety of gifts available and you can even order a pack to help you present your own panto - Aladdin and the Magic Bucket.

Another political alliance has been forged between UNISON and Shelter, which campaigns for homeless and badly housed people.

From brass telescopes to “stripy toe warmers”, Shelter’s online shop has plenty of gift ideas for everyone.

Indeed, for every issue that’s out there, there’s a group that campaigns around it. And you’ll have no trouble finding something to suit your own concerns and those of the people that you’re buying presents for.

Wildlife fans can adopt a dolphin or a whale for as little as £3 a month from The Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and it’s easy to make the adoption a gift for either an adult or a child.

The society has a range of its own goodies (even a Christian Lacroix designer t-shirt) but also benefits from Animal Kind - an organisation that sells merchandise on behalf of a range of groups.

Alongside the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, purchases from Animal Kind benefit a variety of organisations from Cats Protection to Battersea Dogs Home.

You can either order direct from them online or request a catalogue to browse through at home. And there’s no shortage of gift ideas for your own cats and dogs either!

This kind of scheme has become popular with a number of groups, since it avoids each organisation having to source their own goods, design and print their own catalogues, organise their own distribution etc.

Natural Collection is one such company. Its huge selection of products are “carefully chosen to inspire ideas towards a sustainable future”, and a percentage from each sale goes to a range of groups, including Friends of the Earth.

Others stick with the tried-and-tested formula. Amnesty International has its own vast online shop with everything from jewellery to radios and kitchen goodies.

There are toys too, like the delightful Giant Alphabet Crocodile A-Z puzzle that, we are assured, is made by a “Fair Trade craft enterprise in Sri Lanka”.

But there’s plenty of scope to be creative. If you fancy something more ‘mainstream’ but still ‘political’, then you could look at videos/DVDs of films such as Kuhle Wampe, co-directed by left-wing playwright Bertolt Brecht, or the 1931 film version of his and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera.

Then there’s John Sayles’s moving film Matewan, about a mining strike in Virginia. All the above are available from MovieMail – while you can find Michael Moore’s excellent Bowling for Columbine at most outlets and also from Amazon, together with his books.

If you need stocking fillers for someone with a sweet tooth, then Green and Blacks make chocolate on an understanding that “organic and fair trade are inextricably linked”.

And finally, UNISON's very own UNISON Welfare has a range of products available, including mugs, pens and umbrellas. For details of what's available and how to order, contact the communications unit at UNISON head office.

So there is no shortage of possibilities. And you don’t have to compromise your beliefs in order to make sure that everyone’s stocking is full.

Happy shopping – and a happy Christmas too!

Contact the article's author