we are UK's most ethical brand

The Co-operative named the UK’s most ethical brand for the second year running

Leading market researchers GfK NOP asked consumers to name the UK's most ethical brand – and The Co‑operative won the most unprompted votes for the second consecutive year.

We are followed by The Body Shop, Marks and Spencer and Green & Blacks. This accolade is in addition to being named Britain's greenest high street retailer the previous year.

When asked what an ‘ethical brand’ meant to them, the UK consumer has ‘treating third-world suppliers and workers fairly’ as their main priority, then ‘good environmental practices’, ‘ethical business practices’ and ‘treating employees fairly’.

It's not difficult to see why we are top of the pile.

The Co-operative has been the UK’s biggest supermarket supporter of Fairtrade and ethical trading since 1992. We sell the widest range of Fairtrade products in more outlets than any other retailer, which benefits producers in some of the world’s poorest countries in East Africa and in India.

Arguably we do more than any other business in the UK to help tackle climate change, and are one of the world’s largest supporters of renewable energy programmes. We have over 4,000 branches powered by renewable energy, and our carbon emissions from energy consumption have been cut by a staggering 89% since 2003. We also fund a range of carbon offsetting projects across the world.

The study found that the most influential ethical considerations for UK consumers when choosing a retailer is usage of reduced and recycled packaging. Since 2006 we have reduced our own-brand packaging environmental impact by 58 tonnes; and recently opened Waste Works, the largest in-house office recycling centre in the UK.

Compared with the previous year, a higher proportion of consumers stated that they feel ‘pressure to buy ethical brands’, and 71% agree they are more likely to shop with a retailer that sells products sourced from local suppliers. We continually promote animal welfare and have the largest range of RSPCA Freedom Food-labelled products, whose fresh beef, turkey, duck and whole chicken is sourced from around the UK, and all the eggs sold in our stores are either Freedom Food free-range or organic, having improved animal welfare by ending the sale of eggs from caged hens from February 2008.

We are still the only majot retailer to have all our own-brand toiletries and household products accredited to the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) non-animal testing standards. What's more, The Co-operative Bank turned away business worth £696,000 in income last year on the grounds of poor animal welfare standards.

The GfK NOP findings are relatively in line with what we found when conducting our own Food Ethical Policy – the details of which can be found in ethics – with 100,000 of our members’ priorities lying with (in order): ethical trading; animal welfare; environmental impact; food quality, diet and health; and community retailing. These finding have since gone on to shape our ethical and environmental business practices.


Find out more about our campaigns that have made us the UK's most ethical brand in ethics in action.

Read more about the Consumers and Ethical Brands Survey for 2008 at www.gfknop.com (opens in new window).