The Better World Shopping Guide - 2nd Edition: Every Dollar Makes a Difference,   ISBN:9780865716308

Customer Rating: 

This is a great book in that it has been designed well for its purpose. It is a shopping field guide for the "ethical" shopper. It is sturdy and small enough to fit into a pocket, has large print and clear charts, and it simplifies data enough to be clear without being overly reductive. Ellis Jones has done a solid job of researching companies, and the criteria for his ratings make sense.

It is great book to give away. You can buy it in 10 pack pre-packs at a reduced price. I'm going to buy at least one pre-pack and perhaps two to give away this Christmas (rather than "cool" shirts made in sweat shops). In fact, I just gave away my last copy, and so I need to purchase more!

This book could be improved upon in some ways. It could have been published in a greener manner, and it probably should be updated every year (this one is over a year old--2008). I would also like to see a book that provides a bit more detail about each company's rating. (Some of this detail can be found on his Web site.) And some day, a book with more detail on specific products would be very helpful. Another issue is that the book tends to focus on large national companies, rather than smaller regional companies, so this isn't the book for locavores. Still, this is a wonderful book, and there is nothing else on the market quite like it.

Customer Rating: 

You're in the peanut butter aisle. There are 462 choices of creamy-style peanut butter; you know the labels are irrelevant because they're basically all going to taste like peanut butter. So ordinarily, you'd just grab the one with the lowest price or the one your Mom used to buy. But what if there was a way you could look past the labels, the TV ads and the prices, and see what a given company is doing in our world, in an instantaneous way, say by some kind of rating system? That's the premise of this book. Just flip it open and see what kind of letter grades Skippy, Jif, Peter Pan and all the rest of them are earning with their environmental and social practices. I'm willing to pay 10 cents extra to support a company that isn't using blatantly underpaid, underaged labor in a Third World country. I hope you are, too.

Customer Rating: 

This is a great book to help people buy the most productive products. It is small enough to carry with you while shopping.

Customer Rating: 

we sent this to everyone for christmas--it is a valuable guide for shopping and knowing which companies care for the environment, and their employees. we learned things we had no idea about, like which mega companies owned smaller companies. since we are trying to support companies who are smaller, care for the environment, and practice care for their employees; this book is a way to know who to buy from.

Customer Rating: 

Makes being socially conscious very easy.... (maybe that shouldn't be easy, but it's nice) :)