Making the Choices that Make a Difference
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Caring Consumer Guide Making the Choices that Make a Difference |
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TIP 1 |
What are you trying to accomplish?
Many companies that test on animals really do not care about what goes on in their labs. You have to look at the one thing they do care about and that comes down to .. |
TIP 2 |
How can YOU make a difference?
Every time you opt not to buy Item A and choose cruelty-free Item B, you are, in essence, voting with your dollars. You are saying "I'm not going to support animal testing" and choosing to give your money to an alternate company that has made a conscious decision not to torture animals. Does one person's decision make a company stand up and take notice? Of course not, but as long as you make that decision and others do their part as well (be sure to inform your friends of their choices too), eventually, a drop in sales may be noticed. In some ways, it is much like voting, your one vote may be meaningless, but you exercising that right is the part that is meaningful, as is you becoming part of the process. |
TIP 3 |
"It's too overwhelming, I can't keep up with everything."
It's important not to let yourself get too frazzled with all the different products and trying to keep up with every single item that is cruelty-free and which isn't. Even I can't do that every time I find myself at the drug store at 1:00 AM. Don't get discouraged because you come home with a product and later find out that it comes from a pro-animal testing source. The most important event is the time you put a cruel product back on the shelf and choose an animal friendly product over it. At that point, you have made a difference. |
TIP 4 |
Little Things You Can Do
A) Look through your bathroom, find products that are "replacable" B) Print off the Cruelty Page, take it shopping with you C) Browse through the Good Company List, make a "mental note" of familiar names that you may want to check out next time you go shopping D) Look through Leaping Bunny, which 
has a product finder tool, borken down by product type, to help you find
alternates for cruel products. And you can rest assured, Leaping Bunny,
adhreres to the strictest and latest requirements for product approval, per
the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics.
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TIP 5 |
"Isn't this going to be EXPENSIVE???
Not really. The price difference in products is usually negligable. Sometimes, yes, it can be a bit higher. The reason for that is volume sales. The cruelty-free companies are usually much smaller and don't enjoy the economies of scale that large companies do. But, wouldn't you rather pay an extra 30 cents in order for animals to not be tortured? Also, these smaller companies generally use better ingredients and make a better product anyway (they don't have the economic pressure to shave fractions of cents per unit production in order to realize some significant addition to the bottom line). |
TIP 6 |
ONLINE SHOPPING
Online shopping has made the task of selecting cruelty-free products so much easier. For one, there are now several companies that specialize in these high-quality small producer products. Two, the "lock" some of the huge cruel companies, like P&G, had on local store shelves in some areas has been rendered moot. Another benefit, is, as you shop, you can open up another browser window containing the Good Company List. If it's not on the list, simply move on to the next product. |
WHY? |
Why do companies test on animals???
I'm sure the first thought is, who are these heartless sickos that conduct these unnecessary tests in this day and age when so many companies do not? Sadly, they are people like you and me (well, maybe not just like you and me). In loose terms, two things contribute to the continued use of animal tests. One, large companies are slow behemoths when it comes to change. Enough of us need to stop buying their products to bring such about. Two, the fear of liability is so pervasive, especially for American companies, that changing testing methods makes their legal counsel shudder. Yes, they may be aware that there are much better and more accurate methods of testing out there, other than their antiquated animal tests. But, even if their products are harmful to humans (even though animal tests can not convincingly disprove or prove such), they can stand in court and say, "we've been conducting these same tests for 70 years and nothing would indicate .. blah, blah, blah." |
NOTE |
Who are those online companies???
As mentioned earlier, these are some of the online shops that carry many of these cruelty-free products. BUT, the as of late dot com bust has put a good many of them out of business. Hence it has become a lot of work to try to keep this list up to date (and now, many are back). I'll try to get to it soon. |
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If you questions about going cruelty-free shopping,
please feel free to... |
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