Ethical Accreditation

To apply for Ethical Accreditation, please print out the application form here.

The Ethical Company Organisation offers Ethical Accreditation, which certifies the Company or Brand in question has scored highly in an overall analysis of its Corporate Social Responsibility record.

The application process takes 6 weeks and involves our research teams analysing each applicant company’s record on up to 15 specific criteria under the 3 general headings of Environment, Animals and People.  We search for criticisms within several thousand documents from NGO’S, Campaign Groups and Court Reports.  Ethical Accreditation screening includes the applicant company and its ultimate holding company.  The research is  repeated every 12 months to ensure that our Ethical Accreditation awards remain up to date.

Successful Ethical Accreditation earns an Ethical Award for those applicant Companies that score highly (top 33%) overall compared to the other Companies in their sector.  Larger Companies can get a good advance understanding of where they are likely to come in their product sector rankings by seeing how we score them in our ethical reference book, The Good Shopping Guide.

Companies which are awarded Ethical Accreditation are able to benefit substantially from this respected mark of independent endorsement.

A growing list of ethical companies have joined the scheme, to demonstrate the authenticity of their overall Corporate Social Responsibility to consumers, employees, trade partners and share holders.

Accredited companies are listed prominently in The Good Shopping Guide and are also allowed to use both The Good Shopping Guide-Ethical Company and the Ethical Award marks on letterheads; websites; advertising; in press releases; brochures; emails and packaging.  Accredited companies also gain licence to reproduce our research on their product sector.

Click here to see the latest research results for one of our new members, Cafédirect, within the Tea & Coffee sector.

Examples of leading participant ethical companies include Cafédirect, Highland Spring, Brother UK (click here to see how Brother performs in our latest research), Green People and Good Energy. See full list.

The full list of subject matter that records are searched for includes:-

• Environment: environmental reporting; pollution; nuclear power; other environmental issues.
• Animals: animal testing; factory farming; other animal rights.
• People: oppressive regimes; worker’s rights; irresponsible marketing; armaments.
• Extras: genetic engineering; boycott call; political activity; alerts.

For an information pack and further information, please call 0845 257 6818 or email accreditation@ethical-company-organisation.org. 

Or to see how to apply to for Ethical Accreditation now you can download the simple PDF application form here. To navigate this site please use the section headers above or use the useful links below:- Ethical Company Organisation   Ethical Shopping Online   Ethical Investment   Ethical Shopping