Q&A with Ethical Ocean

Eco-friendly, Fair Trade and Vegan–Oh My! I am smitten with a lovely site called Ethical Ocean. Have you heard of it? I tooled around and all of the items below are officially on my “want” list.

I was thrilled when one of the co-founders of the site, Tony Hancock, agreed to an interview.

Check out our Q&A, then pop over to the site and let me know what you think.

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Click on any image to learn more:

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Zina: Tell us a little bit about yourself before we start. How does a mechanical engineering undergraduate who spends his days in solar fields and at the top of wind turbine nacelles end up the president of an online community? Tell us the history!

Tony: It actually started in Africa. I volunteered in school for an organization called “Engineers Without Borders“. They are similar to Doctors Without Borders, but try to leverage engineering skills within development.  I lived in Malawi for 4 months and there met everyone that I work with now at Ethical Ocean. Seeing how purchasing decisions in North America have broad impact on others in developing nations inspired us all to start our site.

I started working for Ethical Ocean on the side. I’d work as a mechanical engineer during the day, then take off my tie and work through the evening and weekends trying to get our site launched. Two years ago, we all kicked in personal money so we could hire our first full time employee. I quit my engineering job and started working from home – it felt amazing to be working on something I was passionate about full time! Today we have four full time employees. We have a great company culture, it is really fun and inspiring to go to work. I still sometimes miss doing more traditional engineering stuff, but I wouldn’t trade jobs with anyone.

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Zina: Tell us a little bit more about your vision for Ethical Ocean.

Tony: Every dollar you spend is a vote for how you would like the world shaped. Corporations follow consumer trends closely, and their activities react almost exclusively to what shoppers are asking for. Take Nike for example, they were once the worst offender in sweatshop labor, but when consumers stopped buying shoes from Nike and started buying them from more equitable companies, Nike had to change their entire supply chain and corporate culture.

We believe that a big part of leaving a better world for our children and grandchildren is shopping more ethically (eco friendly, fairly traded and animal friendly) and being more conscious of where your products come from. Today, that is easier said than done – ethical options exist, but they can be hard to find and even harder to evaluate. Our vision is to mainstream the ethical market, to make it easy to find and compare ethical alternatives to everyday products, and ultimately to grow the size of that market.

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Zina: Tell us about your invite process.

Tony: Two and a half months ago we became a member only site, we accept members as quickly as we can accommodate them, which results in a waiting period. A new member can get in faster by inviting friends and family. I understand this can be frustrating for some people, even myself. I will only sign up for member sites if I really love what they do. As I mentioned earlier, we are in this to really try to grow the segment of the market that shops ethically, and for this to happen people need to start talking about their values with their friends and family, and to let them know that there are more ethical options out there. The member-only model aligns really well with this. Since we switched we have not only seen the number of people using our site increase dramatically, but we’ve seen the frequency and quality of discussions on the site increase significantly. It’s become a better place for everyone involved, which we are really happy about.

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Zina: Tell us about the “Why it Matters” section below the products.

Tony: The ‘Why it Matters’ section of each product page helps tell the story about why that product is making the world better. So your coffee is Fair Trade, what does that mean exactly in the broad picture? We’ve tried to make it easy for people to identify the products that resonate with their values, and to make sense of the many labels and certifications out there. This section is written in layman’s terms, so it is easy to understand why the product is ethical.

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Zina: Does Ethical Ocean have an umbrella site-wide exchange/return policy or is it based on individual stores?

Tony: We have a standard 30 day return policy, though there are a few items which are exempt for hygiene purposes.

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Zina: Tell us a bit about the Ethical Ocean blog. What is the primary focus and who writes for it?

Tony: Our whole team writes for the blog. There is so much more to living sustainably than just products, so the blog naturally developed as a place for us to talk about these things. We cover food, exercise, health, politics, science, just about everything! We also don’t require you to be a member to read the blog, we figure that it is a good way for people to get a feel for what we stand for before deciding if they want to sign up.

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Zina: In our first conversation you mentioned “We’re like Etsy, but we focus on eco-friendly, fair trade and vegan products.” How does the Ethical Ocean verify their sellers are indeed an ethical provider?

Tony: One thing we have learned in founding Ethical Ocean is that ethics can be very subjective. Let me give an example, a pair of leather sneakers produced by workers who earn a fair wage in Ethiopia are considered very ethical by a human rights advocate, but would be considered unethical to a vegan. For that reason we work towards transparency first and foremost and let shoppers find the products that match their values. We interview every seller that signs up on the site, asking about their production practices, ingredients, sustainability policies, etc. We don’t approve everyone, only those we think are really trying to do something better than the average company out there.

This is only half of the equation though, we also really rely on our members to help out – the aggregated knowledge of our members in incredible. We get emails from members all the time pointing out products that might be missing information or be misrepresented. We take each of these emails very seriously, and loop in the seller to help them improve their overall ethics. It doesn’t happen very often, but we’ve also had to remove products that turned out to have weak or false ethical claims.

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Thanks again to Ethical Ocean and Tony for his time! I love their tagline, “Share the way you think!” Let’s Lasso the Moon is proud to work with organizations working toward positive changes for our children’s world. Click here to read our full sponsorship disclosure.