We’re so glad you found your way here.
Buying, shopping, purchasing – we all have to do it. Sometimes it’s a chore, sometimes it’s a hit of dopamine, and sometimes it’s a necessity, but whatever it is that brings you to the online shopping cart or the cashier or the self checkout, we all find ourselves there frequently. Participating in commerce is an inevitable part of life, and our interdependence as human beings is truly a beautiful thing. But as time has gone on, and spending money has become more automatic and convenient, a few things have gotten murky:
- We don’t know where our stuff comes from. And specifically, we don’t know who is making the things we buy. The supply chain is full of people who’ve become invisible to us: the grower, the maker, the deliverer, etc. Those people have names and skills and families, and depending on where the item came from, some of them were treated well and some of them were not.
- We don’t know what our stuff is made of. Is it quality? Is it going to last? Is it made cheaply with materials that are bad for the environment? We don’t always know (or care).
- We don’t think mindfully about our consumption. Consumption itself isn’t bad – we’re consuming from the moment we’re born. But the demand for convenience eliminates any obstacles that make us think about what we’re buying and why. Automatic subscriptions, one-click purchases, and algorithms with endless recommendations all contribute to mindless buying. But if we’re going to consume consciously, we need the friction.
The part where it gets hard
Awareness of these issue is the first step. And once you do start thinking about it, you run into a different problem: finding truly ethical companies to support is exhausting. You can spend an evening reading certifications you’ve never heard of, trying to work out if they’re legit or not. You can dig through an obscure sustainability report looking for answers. You can read reviews, compare claims, and follow a supply chain until it disappears, and at the end of all that, you might have vetted a single brand for a single product that you needed a week ago.
Most of us don’t have that kind of time. A lot of us don’t even know where to start. So we do what we gotta do and buy the thing we need, feel a small pang of guilt about it, and move on.
What we’re building
That’s where we come in. Buy Better Stories is a community-run directory for people who care where their money goes. At its heart is a growing catalog of businesses worth buying from — companies doing work we think deserves support, recommended by people who’ve taken up their cause.
The idea is simple: instead of everyone doing the same research alone, we do it together and leave the results somewhere everyone can find them. Someone spends a month falling down a rabbit hole about a small clothing company with worker ownership and a supply chain they’ll walk you through end to end. Rather than that knowledge staying in one person’s browser history, it goes in the directory, and the next person who needs a t-shirt gets a two-minute answer instead of a two-hour search.
We feature businesses that meet a real standard for fair and ethical practice, and plenty that go considerably further than that — companies built specifically to create meaningful change in the lives of overlooked or marginalized people. Some of them you may have heard of. Most of them, probably not, which is why we’re doing this.
Anyone can add a brand
The directory only works because people contribute to it, so the door is open. If you know a business that deserves to be here, you can submit it, and one of us will read it and make sure it gets published. We take our vetting seriously, as it’s become very easy for a company to say the right things, so we look for evidence that they’re actually walking the walk: fair wages, mission-first practices, worker ownership, a certification, a sustainable supply chain, something along those lines. No company is perfect, but honest effort and transparent practices go a long way.
Why this matters
There’s a reasonable objection to all of this, which is that one person’s shopping habits don’t change very much on a large scale. But researchers who study social movements have found that once around 3.5% of a population commits to something, the rest tends to follow. A committed minority behaving consistently can actually change the system. And even more importantly – many of these businesses are small and one purchase goes a long way to empowering them and their mission!
Come on in
Whether you’ve been a conscious consumer for years or only just started noticing your own habits, this is a place for you. Take a look through the directory. Find a new ethical company to rally behind. And if you already know a business that belongs here, tell us about it — it takes a few minutes, and someone out there will be grateful you did.
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