Published

1 year ago

March 5, 2025

Alice Rush

To navigate through the sea of earth-minded and socially responsible brands, there are some fabulous sustainable and fair trade online stores handpicking beautiful products for the discerning and mindful shopper.

While the growth of ethical and sustainable fashion and lifestyle products is exciting, this growth has also led to a whole lot of greenwashing and “fair-washing”. That’s why I’ve curated this set of shops that sources truly responsibly-made products you can trust.

That said, the terms “ethical”, “sustainable”, and “conscious” can take on different meanings to different people based upon their own personal value systems, so each site curates and sorts their goods based on standards they specify on their site (such as artisan-made, vegan, eco-friendly, fair trade, BIPOC-owned, etc.).

Each eco-friendly and ethical online shop in this guide offers up something a little different from the next with their aesthetics, ethical criteria, and price point.

Take a peek at the sites included here to find one that suits both your value standards and style!

Note that this guide features affiliates and partners. As always I only include brands that meet high standards for ethics and style!

1. ourCommonplace

With everything from sleepwear to scarves and baskets to bedding ourCommonplace is an amazing curated online marketplace for shopping responsibly-made goods in sustainable fashion and home.

All products in the online shop meet at least two of the following six standards.

BIPOC-Owned: supports inclusive representation in the conscious lifestyle space and helps reduce the racial wealth gap by empowering businesses owned Black, Indigenous, and People of Color brand owners and founders.
Cruelty-free: ensures that no animals were killed, hurt, or tested on in the making of these goods.
Ethical: these are products from brands that follow just production practices such as paying fair wages, ensuring safe working conditions, and more.
Sustainable: brands using earth-minded materials (think natural fibers and recycled materials), processes, and packaging throughout their supply chain.
Toxic-Free: products that have been thoroughly vetted and verified to not contain harsh chemicals.
Women-Owned: supports women entrepreneurship and helps reduce the gender income and business owner representation gaps.

Pro Tip: you can “Shop Your Values” by sorting products by each of their standards using their top menu bar.

Categories: Clothing, Shoes, Accessories, Gifts, Jewelry, Home, Beauty & Personal Care

Browse ourCommonplace

2. DoneGood

As your ethical shopping sidekick, DoneGood connects you with over 120 brands that are as committed to doing good as you are. Each brand on our platform is vetted for fair wages, sustainable materials, and community empowerment, ensuring your purchases contribute positively to people and the planet. By choosing DoneGood, you’re joining a movement that’s reshaping markets to meet the needs of conscious consumers like you.

You can shop by values like:

1% For The Planet Members
Certified B Corporations
Cruelty-Free
Eco-Friendly
Empowers Workers
Recycled/Upcycled
USA Made
Vegan
Women-Owned

Categories: Beauty & Care, Pantry, Clothing, Shoes, Jewelry & Accessories, Home & Living, Travel, Baby & Kid, Pets

Browse DoneGood

3. Earthkind

Earthkind is your go-to online marketplace for sustainable and ethical fashion, bringing together eco-conscious brands from around the globe. Offering a diverse selection of clothing and accessories for both men and women, Earthkind ensures that every product aligns with high standards of sustainability and ethical production. Their criteria includes:

Transparency: Brands must openly share their production processes and sourcing practices to ensure consumers are well-informed.
Fair Labor: Ensuring fair wages and safe working conditions is a prerequisite for all partner brands.
Artisan Craftsmanship: Collaborations with artisans are valued to preserve traditional skills and support local communities.
Organic Materials: Preference is given to brands using organic materials, minimizing environmental impact.
Vegan Products: Offering animal-free products aligns with Earthkind’s commitment to cruelty-free fashion.
Synthetic-Free: Brands that avoid synthetic materials contribute to reducing microplastic pollution.
Circularity: Embracing circular fashion principles, such as recycling and upcycling, is encouraged.

Categories: Clothing, Accessories, Jewelry

Browse Earthkind

4. Rêve En Vert

white linen outfit from slow fashion marketplace Reve En Vert

sustainable jewelry from conscious marketplace Reve En Vert

Rêve En Vert is a premier online platform dedicated to sustainable luxury fashion and lifestyle products. Founded with a commitment to environmental responsibility, the company curates a selection of items that embody both style and sustainability. Their ethos centers on promoting ethical practices within the fashion industry, offering consumers a conscious alternative to mainstream shopping.

Criteria for Selection:

Organic: Prioritizing materials grown without harmful chemicals to protect both the environment and consumer health.
Re-Made: Supporting brands that upcycle or recycle materials, giving new life to existing resources.
Local: Emphasizing products made locally to reduce carbon footprints and support regional craftsmanship.
Fair: Ensuring fair labor practices and ethical treatment of workers throughout the supply chain.

Categories: Clothing, Accessories, Gifts, Lifestyle, Beauty

Browse Rêve en Vert

5. GOODEE

artisan-made scarf in red and brown from fair trade retailer GOODEE

indoor plants from fair trade marketplace GOODEE

GOODEE is a Black-owned certified B-Corp hand-selecting exceptional artisan-made goods for the home. One of the most design-forward and high-quality fair trade online stores around, every product on GOODEE is “transparently sourced, ethically-made, and designed to last.”

Additionally, the home goods and lifestyle brands on GOODEE meet at least a few of the following criteria:

Marginalized Communities: brands that give back a portion of profits or revenue to disenfranchised groups. Poverty Reduction consists of brands that guarantee a living wage and provide opportunities for development and career advancement.
Recycled Materials: brands using up-cycled and repurposed materials. Similarly, the Circular Economy value denotes brands that minimize waste and maximizes resource use. And Water Conservancy indicates which companies are preserving water.
Gender Advocacy: brands encouraging women leadership and actively fighting against workplace gender discrimination.
Corporate Reporting: companies providing transparency reports on their current impact as well as their progress.
Community Engagement: organizations participating in local initiatives and involves employees in company decisions.

Categories: Homewares, Gifts, Accessories

Price: $ – $$$

Browse GOODEE (Black-owned retailer)

6. Ten Thousand Villages

Ten Thousand Villages was a pioneer of fair trade goods and continues to operate with ethical practices at every point of their supply chain. The ethical company has both brick-and-mortar fair trade shops and an online fair trade store for finding all things handmade.

This fair trade store sources their products only from artisan groups that pay living wages and ensure safe working conditions and they make an intentional effort to partner with traditionally marginalized communities. By bringing artisan-made handcrafted goods to a global audience, Ten Thousand Villages is supporting the continuation of traditional crafts and providing sustainable economic opportunities. Today, the social enterprise works with over 20,000 artisan makers in 30 different countries.

Categories: Jewelry, Accessories, Home Goods, Gifts, Holiday Decor

Browse Ten Thousand Villages

Earth911 inspirations. Post them, share your desire to help people think of the planet first, every day. Click the poster to get a larger image.

This poster was originally published on January 31, 2020.

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Green Living

10 Books to Counter Consumerism

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

We are constantly bombarded by messages that tell us we need more stuff to be happy. The average American household contains around 300,000 items. The average home size has roughly tripled since the 1950s, and we still rent self-storage units by the millions to hold the overflow.

If you are rethinking your relationship to consumer culture – whether by choice or necessity – we’ve rounded up a list of books to make breaking up with consumerism and easier to understand which of our purchases are really necessary.

(Amazon links are provided for convenience. Your local library and independent bookstore are excellent first stops.)

Empire of Things

by Frank Trentmann

Trentmann’s sweeping 2016 history follows material culture from late Ming China and Renaissance Italy through to today’s global supply chains. He shows that consumerism is not a recent American export but a centuries-long international phenomenon, one that has reshaped households, cities, and the planet.

Empire of Things is dense but never preachy, and it gives readers the long view needed to understand what we are actually pushing back against.

No Logo – 10th Anniversary Edition

by Naomi Klein

No Logo was a movement manifesto when it appeared in 1999, and its dissection of branding, sweatshop labor, and corporate cultural takeover reads as prescient now that nearly every screen on earth is an ad surface. To take the next step, pair this read with Klein’s more recent argument about capitalism and ecological collapse, How To Change Everything.

The Conscious Closet

by Elizabeth L. Cline

Cline first exposed the human and environmental costs of fast fashion in Overdressed (2012). The Conscious Closet is the practical follow-up: how to clean out, repair, swap, and rebuild a wardrobe without funding the industry that produces an estimated 92 million tons of textile waste each year. It is the most actionable book on this list for anyone with a closet.

The Myths of Happiness

by Sonja Lyubomirsky

Psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky brings the receipts. In The Myths of Happiness, she walks through decades of research showing that material milestones — the raise, the upgrade, the bigger house — produce short bursts of satisfaction that fade quickly. What actually sustains wellbeing is rarely for sale. A clarifying read for anyone tempted to outshop their way to contentment.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

by Jenny Odell

Waste is coming for our minds, too. Odell argues that our scarcest resource is attention — and that the platforms we use have turned it into the raw material of a trillion-dollar industry. How to Do Nothing is not a digital-detox manual; it is a case for reclaiming attention as a political act, with consequences for everything from bird-watching to civic life. More relevant in 2026 than when it was published in 2019.

Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

Economic anthropologist Jason Hickel makes the case that endless GDP growth is incompatible with a livable planet, and that “green growth” is mostly a marketing exercise. Less Is More (2020) traces 500 years of capitalism and lays out what a degrowth economy could actually look like — one organized around human and ecological flourishing rather than perpetual expansion. The book has helped move degrowth from the margins of academia into the mainstream of the climate debate.

The Day the World Stops Shopping

by J.B. MacKinnon

Journalist J.B. MacKinnon designed The Day the World Stops Shopping (2021) as a thought experiment — what would happen if global consumption dropped by 25%? — and then watched the pandemic run a version of the experiment in real time. He travels from Namibian hunter-gatherer communities to American big-box retail, talking to economists, ecologists, and CEOs. The result is one of the most readable accounts of why we shop, why we cannot easily stop, and what we would gain if we did.

Consumed: The Need for Collective Change

by Aja Barber

Writer and consultant Aja Barber connects fashion, colonialism, and climate in Consumed (2021), a debut that has become a touchstone for the ethical fashion conversation. Where Cline writes as a practitioner, Barber writes as a systems critic, tracing the textile trade’s roots in slavery and racial inequality and asking readers to confront why we fill emotional gaps with purchases. Pointed, generous, and built to be read in two sittings.

Wasteland: The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future

by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

If consumerism is the input, waste is the output we work hardest not to see. Award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis follows that output across continents in Wasteland (2023) — from New Delhi’s landfills and Ghana’s secondhand clothing markets to nuclear storage sites and the corporate origins of curbside recycling. Named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Kirkus, it is essential reading for anyone who has ever wondered where “away” actually goes.

Fixation: How to Have Stuff Without Breaking the Planet

by Sandra Goldmark

Sandra Goldmark runs a pop-up repair shop in New York and serves as director of sustainability at Barnard College. Fixation (2020) is her plainspoken case for getting things fixed instead of replaced, and for building a circular economy where good design, reuse, and repair are the default. Her five-rule formula — borrowed in spirit from Michael Pollan — is the most quotable advice on this list: “Have good stuff. Not too much. Mostly reclaimed. Care for it. Pass it on.”

What You Can Do

Reading is a start, not a finish. A few next steps:

Start at the library. Most of these titles are available through WorldCat or your local branch. Borrowing keeps a book in circulation and out of a landfill.
Audit one category of stuff before adding to it. Pick clothes, kitchenware, or electronics. Inventory what you already own before the next purchase. Most of us own more than we remember.
Find a repair option in your community. Take the time to locate repair, reuse, and donation outlets near you before tossing anything broken.
Support right-to-repair policy. Several U.S. states have passed right-to-repair laws since 2023; the rest are weighing them. Individual purchasing choices matter more when manufacturers are required to make repair possible.
Read one of these books and talk about it. Anti-consumption is harder alone. Book clubs, mutual-aid groups, and faith communities have all become surprising hubs for this work.

Editor’s Note: Originally authored by Gemma Alexander on June 18, 2020, this article was updated in May 2026.

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Green Living

Best of Sustainability In Your Ear: EarthX CEO Peter Simek on Cultivating Bipartisan Climate Strategies

Published

5 days ago

May 20, 2026

Alice Rush

Subscribe to receive transcripts by email. Read along with this episode.

For 15 years, the Dallas-based climate conference the EarthX conference has created space where fossil fuel executives and environmental activists, Republican appropriations chairs and Democratic climate hawks, find common ground. The organization targets three core stakeholders: the corporate world, policymakers, and investors seeking startups where environmental solutions are baked into the bottom line. Peter Simek, EarthX’s CEO, explains how reframing climate action around shared values—stewardship, economic opportunity, and love of the land—unlocks support that crisis messaging alone cannot reach.

The doom story doesn’t sell, Simek explained. “We’re not motivated as a species by doomsday language. It puts people in fight-or-flight mode.” He points out how climate became an identity issue, tangled up in culture-war debates over hamburgers and gas-powered trucks, when the real conversation should center on clean air, clean water, and protecting the places we love. “The EPA and the Clean Air and Clean Water Act were passed during the Nixon administration,” he notes. “There are ways to message this that appeals across lines.”

Peter Simek, CEO of EarthX, is our guest on *Sustainability In Your Ear*.

Simek bets heavily on bottom-up action as EarthX works to build bridges. States, cities, and private capital often move faster than federal mandates, he argues, and they’re harder to reverse with a single executive order. Texas leads the nation in renewable energy deployment because wind and solar make bottom-line sense. “Even as there’s a policy turn against it, there’s still the driving reality that solar and wind are viable energy sources,” he says. A new event in 2026, the EarthX Institute, will focus on two policy priorities: nuclear energy, where bipartisan consensus is growing, and urban biodiversity.

Whether conversations at forums like EarthX translate into policy velocity that matches the pace of climate impacts remains to be seen. Simek says he stays focused on tracking downstream results, specifically the investments funded, the coalitions built, and the policies incubated from the local level up. “It’s about finding those ways in which there’s common sense, common ground, common values,” he says. “Elements to talking about nature and the environment that no one can really disagree with.”

Learn more about EarthX and its upcoming April 2026 conference at earthx.org.