Green and Blacks

Apparently Cadburys have stated that their buy out of the fabulous Green and Blacks will not adversely impact the brand or its values.

Time will tell I guess. Sadly in my experience large corporations seem to almost invariably follow the pattern of buying up a smaller concern because of their unique nature, but then find themselves unable to refrain from dominating the smaller entity until whatever uniqueness there was is smothered out of existence.

Still it could have been worse…I suppose Nestles could have been the buyer and then where do you go ethically?

Discussion on this acquisition has been bubbling on the Ship of Fools discussion boards and in reading the views of the north american posters, I realise just how far the fair trade/ethical consumerism movement has come in the last decade or so. Remember when you struggled to find even Fair Trade coffee?

Still it’s a quagmire of ethics trying to balance all the various issues of eco, social and ethical responsibility. But as one astute poster observes it’s important to try given that even if we can’t bring ourselves to be motivated to attempt to be part of ‘the solution’, our unthinking consumerism is not neutral and will indeed all too often make us part of ‘the problem’.

Of course in balance to this one can become insufferably overbearing and self-righteous about such stuff – the phrase “salvation through correct shopping” did raise a wry smile…