Following on from the Nestle thread, what do you boycott, and why?

[UnderRated]

Other than Nestle (& its subsidiaries)?

Wal-Mart since I know you're in the U. S.

Tesco, products from China and Israel, non-sustainable fish, Operation Christmas Child, plastic carrier bags, intensively reared animals....the list goes on.

For a while, when my db was in a miserable marriage to a horrendous Spanish woman, I boycotted Spanish products. Bizarrely, it made me feel a lot better! He's now married to a different and lovely Spanish woman, so I'm back on the Rioja!

Anything Chinese (though this is very difficult), plastic tat in general, anything from abroad that I can get a British version of (I'm talking food here), chocolate/coffee/tea/sugar etc that isn't Fairtrade, non-sustainable fish, nasty chemical cleaning stuff (cillit bang etc). It drives DP nuts.

@ Seeker.

Products from Israel, I don't donate to childrens charitys, and plastic bags and tat.

Did anyone else take years to get their head round buying South African produce again ?

cmotdibbler - What is the reason for not donating to childrens charitys?

Oh yes, forgot we don't buy Israeli stuff either. I don't buy SA stuff still, mainly because of the air miles aspect.

I don't exactly boycott it, but I'm still very reluctant about McDonalds after the McLibel stuff. Trying to do Nestle but can't claim to be 100 per cent Nestle-free yet. Am thinking about a China boycott, but that must be really hard... any tips??

Oh, and Murdoch products. We've been offered Sky at a discount becase BIL works for the Old Devil himself, but I won't have it in the house.

Why don't you buy anything chinese?

Me - Nestle, Walmart, Primark, plastic bags, over packaged products, cheap plastic toys and tat

try to buy fair trade where possible, or otherwise clothes from companies which at least have an ethical policy of some sort (if you ask for it, they will either email you an ethical policy, or make an excuse about why they don't have one)

Fair trade food where possible.

try to buy sustainable wod products

try to buy organic cotton.

It is a pain though, as so often you can't find a fair trade version - eg, kids socks and undies.

But hopefully market forces will move this along within the next few years.

coca cola and its products.

Can i ask why (and how) do people boycott stuff from China? Is it because of their human rights record? Must be very tricky....

We have a more or less total boycott of Nestle, McDonalds, Microsoft, and factory farmed meat.

And we aim not to buy air freighted food. Or shop at Tesco. Aim for fair trade food and/or local where possible. Would like to boycott all the major supermarkets but we don't manage that. Also aim not to buy anything Disney.

There are lots of other things we boycott too, I've forgotten some at the moment. Our shopping gets quite complicated.

Princess - on principle because they get donated to other others because of the cute factor. I don't normally do animal charities for the same reason.

When turning down donating to one (like last year our company charity of the year was one raising money to buy DVD player, playstations etc for the new childrens hospital), I always donate an equivalent amount to an 'underloved' charity, such as the Miscarriage Association or one supporting adults with learning disabilities.

Never go to McDonalds, and do try to buy Fairtrade /local produce whereever possible.

Forgot that I am boycotting Kettle crisps after their union busting tactics, and avoid Walmart at all costs anyway.

Nothing from Israel (although have fallen down on basil and peppers a couple of times)

Try to do fairtrade where affordable.

Will not go near McDonalds and aim to keep dd out of there as long as poss.

No donations to religious charities.

I don't manage to keep on top of this stuff as much as I'd like though, and alternatives are often expensive.

I am proud to say that neither of my DC have ever been in MCDonalds. If they had the chance they would not take it.
Other than that I do most of the above: Fairtrade and local as much as possible. I do use Tesco a bit as they are the only supermarket that delivers in my area so I do a monthly bulk shop of tins, non perishables etc.
Can't stand Primark and trying to avoid cheap throw away clothing generally.
Don't have Sky.
But Nestle Shreddies as only cereal my DD likes.

I boycott China for loads of reasons but mainly human rights and green issues. I also want to support British manufacturing (which is pretty non-existant nowadays). It is impossible to boycott China completely, but becoming slightly less of a consumer and not buying stuff (especially plastic tat) that you don't need helps.

why microsoft?
why disney?

Would you buy fair trade from china (not that I know of any...)?

would you buy Plaistinian goods (not that I can think of any...)?

This is very interesting.

Fairtrade and China are mutually exclusive as far as I'm aware. I have found organic sunflower seeds that come from China though.

Microsoft is DP's one, he's a computer programmer and many of them loathe microsoft for deliberately making its products incompatible with other systems and with built-in redundancy value so you have to keep buying new updated versions - bad in terms of the environmental impact of all that excess computer gear, also expensive and making it hard for people to afford things. Or that's the gist of it.

Unlike say Apple. Or Freeshare whereby programmers share their software for free.

Disney. Generally dislike their messages for small children, especially the sexism racism heterosexism pinkism marraigism slushism consumrism.... Particularly dislike the way they dominate so many toys and clothes - colonising the world with their vision of childhood and life. We do watch some Disney films, I suppose in fact we boycott all Disney products which aren't actual films.

Also I hate books without authors such as Disney's "book" Peter Pan. etc. There's a perfectly good Peter Pan book already thank you.....

doesnt the fact that bill gates has given an awful lot of his money to charity let microsoft off the hook?

DP is adament. And he knows a lot more about this issue than I do, also he buys all the computer equipment. He feels that charitable giving doesn't mitigate for deliberately monopolising the computer market.

Bill gates does give a finominal amount of money to charity, esp aids research.

and sorry but at apple not having a monopoly. ipod/itunes/iphone anyone?

Ok I have asked DP on msn and here is his reply, I've unleashed a torrent, he's still typing furiously away....

Too big and too powerful. The capitalist system depends on healthy competition and there can be none while microsoft are the only realistic option for an Operating system on a computer and they also market applications
There are examples of microsoft being caught using their inside knowledge of the OS to give their applications an edge over competition.
for the OS itself there is no competition.
Also microsoft are not just big they are truly scary. I think I am right in saying they are not merely the biggest corporation in existence they are bigger than the next nine biggest put together. (I do not have a reference for that statistic, and don't have time to research it now)
Their software is proprietary - so as a programmer I cannot go and look at it and see what (else) it is doing. That is fine - they are a private company and are not obliged to share their secret formulla with me any more than the bakers down the road needs to divulge his recipe.
the problem is that as a programmer I know what they COULD do in terms of mnonitoring what we all do on our PCs and I cannot prove that they don't.
I am expected to trust them. and there are occasions of them being caught doing dodgy stuff so I don't trust them.
if microsoft chose to they could write code that would monitor everything you ever do - every keystroke - every web page. They say they don't and I am expected to trust them. but there is very little in place to enforce that. and even so they periodically get caught doing stuff they aren't supposed to do. It makes me very uncomfortable.
also I really object to "click through license agreements" - microsoft invented them and are still the main user of them.
You install software an enourmous legal document appears with do you accept? you have the option of saysing "No" and not using the software which you might need in order to do your job, saying yes without reading it and who knows what you are agreeing to, or reading it which is unbelievably tedious and I usually don't understand them anyway.
so I can only continue to function normally in the modern world by routinely signing contracts I have not read. contracts with a company that has the biggest legal department on earth.

and he's still typing... he's not keen on them at all.