What is a Socially Responsible

Business?

A socially responsible company acts on the belief that we all have responsibilities to society that go above and beyond legal requirements. They refrain from doing things that create harm and to move forward things that make the world a better place for everyone. The green, fair trade, and other socially responsible companies at Idealist Gifts accept that they may sometimes profit less by doing the right thing – and they do it anyway.

What is the right thing? By most social responsibility standards, the right thing includes:

1. Making sure products and services are safe and healthy for the people using them, the environment, and the communities where they’re produced

2. Offering workers respectable pay and benefits rather than minimum wage and part-time status

3. Ensuring worker safety and an employee culture of respect

4. Paying a fair purchase price to artisans, growers, and other producers for materials, products and services

5. Giving back to society by donating to the nonprofits working for a better world

6. Creating safeguards against any corrupt, irresponsible, or unethical behavior by the company's representatives

7. Taking responsibility for any unintended negative impacts on the environment, workers, customers and communities – and acting immediately to correct and compensate for it

Businesses vary widely in how socially responsible they are, and some get high marks in one area, but not in others.

For instance a green business may excel at providing products that are safe and healthy for people and the environment, but they may pay low wages to their workers and unfair prices to producers. This may be unavoidable, since many green businesses have struggled to stay in business due to slow social acceptance of the need to buy green.

Likewise, an exemplary fair trade company may pay fair prices to producers in the developing world, but not all of their products will be organic or eco-friendly. Fair trade principles do, however, call for minimizing environmental impacts.

A conscious consumer’s highest use of personal buying power is to choose products as often as possible that are:

- locally made or grown (reduces energy used in transport)

- made with natural, organic ingredients

- made (or packaged) with recycled materials

- produced using manufacturing methods that have minimal environmental impacts

- used or refurbished

- purchased from producers using fair trade standards

- offered by companies whose lowest paid workers earn a living wage instead of minimum wage and who offer good benefits

- offered by companies that donate meaningfully to nonprofits (i.e. more than a tokenistic percentage of profits)

We’ve made annotations when a company in our gift guide has multiple certifications and donates to causes.

We’ve divided our shopping guide into the following categories:

Green businesses – selling products that are safe for the environment and carry certifications that prove it (e.g. Certified Organic).

Fair trade businesses – selling products where producers were paid fairly and efforts were made to minimize environmental and community impacts, and they carry certifications that prove it (e.g. Transfair Certified).

Socially responsible businesses – selling products where workers were treated well, efforts were made to minimize environmental impacts, and/or they donate meaningfully to good causes, and they are members of a socially responsible business association.

If you know of a business that should be included in our next gift guide, please recommend them to us by e-mail.