All posts tagged: Ethical

From toothpaste tablets to hand soap: nine sustainable subscriptions for greener, easier living | Ethical and green living

From toothpaste tablets to hand soap: nine sustainable subscriptions for greener, easier living | Ethical and green living

Published by Sam Flores

Whether they’re full of harmful chemicals or packaged in plastic, it’s no secret that many household cleaning products aren’t great for the planet. But “taking a more sustainable approach to washing and cleaning doesn’t have to be inconvenient”, said Hannah Rochell in her recent roundup of the best sustainable subscriptions. From vegan washing detergent in a natty recyclable tin to compostable scourers, her guide is full of delivery services that make greener living less effortful. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Her list wasn’t exhaustive, though, so we asked you for the subscription services you swear by for cutting costs, reducing household waste and making your life easier. (And no one has any commercial links to these companies – we always check.) ‘Changed my life for the better’ Swap shop: changing to sustainable brands and products can be just as effective, and still affordable. Photograph: Maria Korneeva/Getty Images Some of you seconded Hannah’s suggestions. One reader said they also use Fussy deodorant …

Ethical Spending Without Losing Your Mind

Ethical Spending Without Losing Your Mind

Published by Sam Flores

After talking with Harvard Business School’s Nien-Hê Hsieh about moral gray zones in leadership, Tom and Amber zoom in on the everyday gray zones most of us face: What do you do when ethical clothing costs twice as much? Should you switch banks if yours funds fossil fuels? How much label-scanning is too much? From private school garage sales as a surprisingly ethical hack to choosing a local community bank over a national giant, they explore creative “third ways” that move beyond cynicism or naïveté. Tom introduces the idea of a spending “shot clock” – a time limit to keep values-driven decisions from turning into analysis paralysis. Grounded in listener questions and ancient wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita, this episode offers practical guidance for the conscious consumer – and helps us let go of the illusion that any purchase can ever be perfect. Source link

Why Are We So Obsessed With Dead Girls? These Books Explore if True Crime Is Ethical

Why Are We So Obsessed With Dead Girls? These Books Explore if True Crime Is Ethical

Published by José Betancourt

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. What’s the deal with True Crime? That’s the question we recently asked ourselves over on Book Riot’s mystery and thriller podcast, Read or Dead. My cohost, Katie McLain Horner, and I took an episode to read some recent(ish) titles about true crime and how the genre is evolving. For far too long, true crime has thrived on our obsession with these violent acts. We can’t look away, mesmerized by someone else’s worst day of their lives. But in the last decade, more and more voices are speaking out against our culture’s voyeuristic treatment of violence towards women and girls. They ask big questions like, what are the ethics behind consuming this content? Who is allowed to tell the story of these crimes? And whose stories AREN’T being told? The books below answer these questions and more. Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving American Culture by Alice Bolin Why are we so obsessed with dead girls? When I first read …

AI is transforming pediatric surgery, but with strong ethical concerns

AI is transforming pediatric surgery, but with strong ethical concerns

Published by Jenni Sidey

Before a child goes into an operating room, a large screen displays a risk score. This score predicts potential complications, provides an estimated time for recovery, and recommends the course of action. While the numbers appear to be accurate, the process that goes into creating them is harder to see. Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly emerging in the field of paediatric surgery by offering greater accuracy in diagnosis, enhanced planning capabilities for surgery, and reduced amounts of paperwork for the clinician. However, the same technologies that have enabled doctors to streamline care have also introduced a new source of uncertainty for parents and caregivers when making decisions about children who are unable to speak for themselves. How AI Intersects With The OR The advantages of AI in the operating room (OR) are obvious. For example, machine learning programs have been developed that allow for the identification of surgical risks and complications. Other machine learning systems can interpret imaging studies and predict the likelihood of complications occurring after a complex surgical procedure. There are also applications …

How to Buy Ethical and Eco-Friendly Electronics (2026)

How to Buy Ethical and Eco-Friendly Electronics (2026)

Published by skeptic

We all love shiny new electronics. But every new smartphone or laptop comes with baggage. Weighing climate dread, terrible working conditions, energy usage, and worries over hellish e-waste graveyards can quickly kill your excitement about shopping for a new gadget. None of us wants to be complicit, but what can we do if these issues concern us? Sadly, there’s no easy way to find ethically manufactured and eco-friendly electronics. But there are things you can do to reduce any negative impact your purchases may have. Here are a few ideas we’ve compiled, with the help of Alex Crumbie, writer and researcher at Ethical Consumer, a UK magazine that ranks brands across various categories, from environmental reporting to workers’ rights. Updated March 2026: I’ve conducted a new expert interview, added options for buying used or refurbished, added Framework laptops, and removed some older picks. Table of Contents AccordionItemContainerButton Repair What You Have The best way to minimize your impact is to avoid buying new devices if you can. The unpalatable truth is that every new gadget …

‘Our sofa bed sold the same day’: how to get rid of household clutter – without sending it to landfill | Ethical and green living

‘Our sofa bed sold the same day’: how to get rid of household clutter – without sending it to landfill | Ethical and green living

Published by Sam Flores

Forget blossom and bluebells, for many of us, the changing season means one thing: time for a spring clean. While you may have tackled the clothes you no longer want without sending them to landfill (if not, have a read of our guide to clearing out your clothes sustainably), other items in our homes are not always as straightforward. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. According to the circular living organisation Wrap, 22m items of furniture are thrown away each year in the UK, and worldwide, we discard 2.6m tonnes of e-waste (electronic waste) annually. Many of these items could be resold, upcycled or recycled. The British Heart Foundation reports that 62% of us throw away homeware items that are in good enough condition to be donated to charity. Here are some of the best ways to reuse, recycle and upcycle your unwanted stuff. How to get rid of household clutter Furniture Great to donate: charity shops are perfect for giving away …

Iris Murdoch’s Psychology of Haunting: Fantasy, Ethical Attention, and the Spectral Past

Iris Murdoch’s Psychology of Haunting: Fantasy, Ethical Attention, and the Spectral Past

Published by Jenni Sidey

Iris Murdoch’s fiction is filled with the uncanny and the weird: drowned bodies, vampiric presences, telekinetic objects, angelic visitations, prophetic dreams, and adolescent “feyness.” Yet these phenomena are rarely reducible to her gothic atmosphere or the supernatural. Instead, Murdoch develops a psychology of haunting: a moral-psychological and ethical structure in which the spectral registers the persistence of trauma, the distortions of egoistic fantasy, and the unresolved presence of the past. There has been a significant amount of attention given to Murdoch’s explicitly gothic novels— The Flight from the Enchanter, The Bell, The Unicorn, The Italian Girl, The Time of the Angels—yet the supernatural flows consistently throughout Murdoch’s fictional work, far beyond her early gothic phase. From Jake Donoghue’s perception of Sadie Quentin as a witch in Under the Net to the strange angelic residue of Jackson in Jackson’s Dilemma, haunting becomes an enduring feature of Murdoch’s fictional world. The question is not whether Murdoch “believes” in ghosts but what psychological and ethical work haunting performs. (Details for all of Murdoch’s fictional works can be found …

Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off

Anthropic’s Ethical Stand Could Be Paying Off

Published by Sam Flores

At first glance, last week looked like a catastrophe for Anthropic. The AI company refused to let the U.S. government use its products to surveil the American public or direct autonomous weapons without human oversight. In response, the Department of Defense canceled its $200 million contract. On Truth Social, President Trump called the company “leftwing nut jobs” and ordered every federal agency to immediately stop using its products. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went a step further, designating Anthropic as a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security.” OpenAI, Anthropic’s chief rival, quickly signed its own deal with the Pentagon. Anthropic’s principled stand continues to pose enormous risks for the company. But some early indications suggest that it just might pay off. The company’s confrontation with DOD has proved more effective than some of the world’s most expensive advertising—at least according to one metric. After a Super Bowl campaign earlier this year, Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, became one of the top 10 most-downloaded free apps in America, per Apple’s charts. The day after Hegseth announced that the government …

How business students learn to make ethical decisions by studying a soup kitchen in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods

How business students learn to make ethical decisions by studying a soup kitchen in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods

Published by Sam Flores

(The Conversation) — For the past decade I have volunteered at St. Francis Inn, a soup kitchen in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. Kensington, for those not from Philly, has long had a reputation for potent but affordable street drugs. Interstate 95 and the Market-Frankford elevated commuter train line provide easy access to the neighborhood for buyers and sellers, and abandoned buildings offer havens for drug use and other illicit activity. St. Francis Inn Ministries, which was founded by two Franciscan friars in 1979, serves sit-down breakfast and dinner for thousands of people each year, many of whom suffer from poverty, homelessness and substance use disorder. It also runs Marie’s Closet, a charity that provides free used clothing and housewares. These ministries are operated by a core team of nine full-time members, hundreds of volunteers from local high schools and colleges, and an ad hoc team of folks from many walks of life. In the years I’ve been volunteering at St. Francis, significant changes have occurred in Kensington, including gentrification, soaring housing prices and increased …

12 sustainable cleaning and toiletries subscriptions that make life easier – and cut plastic waste | Ethical and green living

12 sustainable cleaning and toiletries subscriptions that make life easier – and cut plastic waste | Ethical and green living

Published by Sam Flores

When it comes to cleaning products, both for our bodies and our homes, convenience is a bit of a dirty word. While you may have a sparkling loo, the environment won’t thank you for multiple single-use plastic bottles of cleaning fluid and ingredients that go down the sink despite the small print warning of the harm to marine life. The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. UK households use 13bn plastic bottles every year, which take at least 450 years to decompose, while more than 212m toothbrush heads or manual toothbrushes are thrown away across the country annually. For this reason, I’ve been moving away from conventional, easy-to-pick-up-with-the-big-shop products for the past decade. Taking a more sustainable approach to washing and cleaning doesn’t have to be inconvenient, though, and it’s easier than it was when I first started doing it. If – like me – you’ve ever had to resort to buying “emergency” shampoo in a plastic bottle because you didn’t have time …