Posted on February 2, 2024
Donations update: Support the Center for American Progress in its fight to change the country through bold, progressive ideas
Note from the CREDO Mobile team: This February, the Center for American Progress (CAP) is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO Mobile community will help CAP in its mission to shape the national debate, expose the hollowness of conservative governing philosophy and challenge the media to cover the issues that truly matter.
Read this important blog post about CAP’s critical work, then visit CREDODonations.com and cast your vote to help send funding to CAP to support its efforts—and the efforts of our other outstanding February grantees.
The Center for American Progress is an independent nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Our aim is not just to change the conversation but to change the country.
We believe we owe it to future generations to protect the planet and promote peace and shared global prosperity. And we believe an effective government can earn the trust of the American people, champion the common good over narrow self-interest and harness the strength of our diversity. We must chart a path toward building a stronger, more resilient nation that can lead the world and compete and cooperate within it.
CAP is uniquely positioned to help generate policy solutions that aim to achieve objectives which focus on five cross-cutting institutional organizational priorities, all of which apply as much internationally as domestically:
- Building an economy for all
- Restoring social trust in democracy
- Advancing racial equity and justice
- Tackling climate change and environment injustice
- Strengthening health
CAP has been around for 20 years and it has been an integral organization in the fight for the rights of the American people. Our position as the preeminent multi-issue progressive think tank, with an extensive network of allies and stakeholders, empowers us to serve as the leader and convener in the several policy areas we focus on.
As a multidisciplinary organization, we can develop and promote cross-cutting policies that examine solutions through a variety of lenses. CAP serves as a one-of-a-kind resource and strategy center for allies across the country, forging relationships with key constituencies, organizations and individuals necessary to create the networks critical to our success today and necessary to win the battles of the future. Our policy expertise and insight and access to the levers of federal power enable us to be bold in building political will.
Watch this short video to learn more about CAP. Or visit AmericanProgress.org.
Posted on February 1, 2024
Vote for Brady: United Against Gun Violence, Center for American Progress and Inside Climate News this February
Every month, CREDO members vote to distribute our monthly grant to three incredible progressive causes – and every vote makes a difference. This February, you can support Brady: United Against Gun Violence, Center for American Progress and Inside Climate News.
Brady: United Against Gun Violence
For 50 years, Brady has united gun owners and non-gun owners alike in the fight against gun violence. With targeted programs designed to tackle the root causes of gun violence in America, Brady works to ensure that every community is safer.
Support from CREDO will bolster Brady’s on-the-ground programs in areas most impacted by gun violence, help us take the gun industry to court, promote safe gun storage, and more. Each vote gets us closer to ending our gun violence epidemic.
Center for American Progress
The Center for American Progress is an independent, nonpartisan policy institute that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action.
Join us in recognizing our collective accomplishments as we take on the most urgent challenges of today—from growing the middle class and tackling climate change, to addressing artificial intelligence and protecting democracy.
Inside Climate News
Inside Climate News is the leading voice of independent climate journalism in the country. Our groundbreaking work reduces greenhouse gas emissions, holds polluters accountable, empowers voters, and protects communities suffering from environmental injustice.
Funding from CREDO would allow us to significantly expand our environmental justice coverage, undertake new in-depth climate investigations, and strengthen our work in local news markets as a force multiplier for environmental journalism nationwide.
Your vote this month will determine how we divide our monthly donations among these three progressive groups. Be sure to cast your vote to support one, two or all three by February 29.
CREDO members who use our products and services everyday are the reason we are able to make these donations each month. Learn more about CREDO Mobile and join our movement.
Posted on January 30, 2024
You’re invited: Black History Month Grantee Events
In anticipation of Black History Month – which kicks off, February 1st – we reached out to some of our incredible nonprofit partners to see how they’re planning to celebrate. From trainings to readings to panel discussions, our partners have planned some amazing things and they would love for you to join them.
Everyday Solidarity: Interracial Organizing Stories from The Sum of Us
TIME: February 5, 7:00 PM ET
LOCATION: Virtual
PARTNER ORG: Zinn Education Fund
LINK: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/heather-mcghee-on-the-sum-of-us/
On Monday, February 5, 2024, policy advocate Heather McGhee will discuss The Sum of Us: How Racism Hurts Everyone, the young readers’ edition of her bestselling book and the podcast companion series.
D.C. Area Black Lives Matter at School Year of Purpose and Week of Action
TIME: February 5-9
LOCATION: D.C. Area
PARTNER ORG: Zinn Education Fund
LINK: https://www.dcareaeducators4socialjustice.org/black-lives-matter-week-action
This local week of action built on the momentum of past years’ successful weeks of action and the National Black Lives Matter at School Year of Purpose campaign in cities across the U.S. to promote a set of national demands based in the Black Lives Matter guiding principles that focus on liberation and racial justice in education for Black youth, educators, and all youth of color.
A New Approach to Teaching the Reconstruction Era: Online Course for Teaching Professionals
TIME: February 8 – March 20; Various Times
LOCATION: Virtual
PARTNER ORG: Facing History and Ourselves
LINK: https://www.facinghistory.org/learning-events/new-approach-teaching-reconstruction-era-online-course
During this course, you will learn to teach about the Reconstruction era to help students connect this history to the choices they make today. Intended for 7th–12th grade US history, humanities, and English language arts teachers and curriculum specialists.
Bystander Intervention to Stop Hate and Harassment on Campus Training
TIME: February 9, 6:00 – 7:00 PM EST
LOCATION: Virtual
PARTNER ORG: Right To Be
LINK: https://righttobe.org/events/bystander-intervention-to-stop-hate-and-harassment-on-campus-4/
Everyone deserves to live free of harm, and Right To Be believes in promoting acts of humanity, kindness, and care during challenging times. The organization is dedicated to fostering safer college campuses by empowering individuals to intervene effectively in the face of hate and harassment. Join Right To Be in this 60-minute interactive workshop, designed to empower students (staff and faculty too) with the essential tools to navigate challenging moments and make a difference for someone experiencing harm.
Stand Up Against Street Harassment Training
TIME: February 12, 5:00 – 6:00 PM EST
LOCATION: Virtual
PARTNER: Right To Be
LINK: https://righttobe.org/events/stand-up-against-street-harassment-8/
How can we take action if we don’t know what to do? Right To Be is offering this free, one-hour, interactive training to train people on how to safely intervene when you witness street harassment — or experience it yourself. During this training you’ll learn a clear, adaptable, and expert-approved set of tools that have been proven to reduce the prevalence of street harassment: Right To Be’s 5Ds of bystander intervention.
REPORT: The Three Labor Market Struggles Facing Black America
PARTNER: Center for Economic and Policy Research
LINK: https://cepr.net/report/the-three-labor-market-struggles-facing-black-america/
The Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Director of Race and Economic Justice, Algernon Austin, outlines three distinct challenges that Black America suffers from in the labor market in this brand new report.
Posted on January 16, 2024
Finishing with impact: CREDO Mobile closes 2023 with a rush of positive change
In a lot of ways, 2023 was a tough year. Those of us who care about progressive change and work for it every day watched as the world seemed to spin backward on many fronts—political, social, environmental.
We saw “leaders” amplifying hate and attacking the rights of women and minorities. We saw economic inequality surge to the point where the richest 1% in the U.S. now own more wealth than the entire middle class. We saw global heating emerge as a force that could soon end our existence on Earth.
That’s the bad news. But amid it all there was good news as well. Progressives fought and won important victories for climate justice, women’s rights, economic fairness and numerous other causes.
Here at CREDO Mobile, we made a lot of good news ourselves. We powered positive change around the world, doing it through our unique—and uniquely effective—donations program, which each month grants much-needed funding to three progressive nonprofit groups working day in and day out for the causes we believe in.
To date, we’ve donated over $95 million to hundreds of nonprofits in the issue areas of economic justice, voting rights, climate justice, civil rights, women’s rights and peace.
Our dollars made change in 2023
In the second half of 2023, we donated to these 18 nonprofits.
These groups are achieving real wins for progressive causes in part due to the donations they’ve received from CREDO Mobile. Here are just a few of the victories they’ve won recently.
- Amazon Watch pressed President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to veto a right-wing attempt to restrain the rising strength of Indigenous peoples in Brazil. This was a critical win for Indigenous rights and for the Amazon rainforest.
- The ACLU educated and energized voters to go to the polls in November and played a key role in winning election victories in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia that bolster the right of women to make their own decisions about whether and when to have a child, without interference from judges and politicians.
- Stand.earth continued to press for institutions to divest from the fossil fuel industry and, in December, announced that Swiss pension fund CPEG, the UK’s Wiltshire Pension Fund and the largest private pension fund in the Netherlands had joined the divestment movement. More than 1,600 institutions, representing $40.6 trillion in assets, have now cut ties with fossil fuel companies.
- Social Security Works helped expose House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as an enemy of Social Security who wants to raise the retirement age, cut benefits and force women to have babies so the ultra-wealthy can continue avoiding their fair share of Social Security contributions.
- The Brennan Center for Justice developed bold solutions to ensure that every eligible American can cast a ballot and worked across the U.S. to defend democracy by making voting more free, fair and easy.
Help us make more positive change in 2024
The CREDO Mobile donations program is simple yet powerful, raising real money and driving real victories for progressive causes.
It works this way. When our customers use our service, they generate funds for the program. At the end of each month, we take those funds and grant them to three nonprofit groups dedicated to progressive change. Then, the next month, we do it again.
These donations cost our customers nothing extra. But they mean everything to the groups we support. If you’re a CREDO Mobile customer, thank you.
If you’re not a customer, please consider joining our movement and helping us make more progressive change in 2024. It’s easy to do. You can bring the phone you have now. You can choose from a variety of affordable plans to suit you—same as the other carriers. And you can enjoy service on the nation’s top-rated network.
Posted on January 4, 2024
Big banks are funding climate chaos but Rainforest Action Network is fighting back
Note from the CREDO Mobile team: This January, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO Mobile community will help RAN in its mission to preserve forests, protect the climate and uphold human rights by challenging corporate power and systemic injustice through frontline partnerships and strategic campaigns.
Read this important blog post about RAN’s critical work, then visit CREDODonations.com and cast your vote to help send funding to RAN to support its efforts — and the efforts of our other outstanding January grantees.
There are parts of India, the country where I’m from, that are questioning whether or not humans can survive there anymore because of the weather. In the summer of 2022, heatwaves killed 61,600 people in Europe. In the summer of 2023, going outside for a day in my current home of Washington, D.C., was like inhaling 22 cigarettes because of the Canadian wildfire smoke. Over 20 million acres of wild lands were burning there, 21 times more than the average this decade.
Also last summer, 100 million people in the U.S. were under heat advisories, as dangerous weather burned crops, delivered killing heat strokes and caused power grid failures as people tried to stay cool running their air conditioners all night long. This was on top of the disasters of fire and flood. Death Valley, in California, experienced the hottest temperatures ever recorded on the planet, which also happened in 2020 and 2021.
These events are not random, they’re clearly linked to climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels. World scientists have issued dire warnings yet fossil fuel companies expand supply, making record profits — and big banks help them. Since the Paris Agreement was signed, banks have poured $5.5 trillion of financing into fossil fuel companies. Last year, banks pumped $669 billion of cash into fossil fuel companies while thousands of people died from flooding in Nigeria, India and Pakistan, in addition to the tens of thousands of people who died in the European heatwave.
One of the worst sources of climate chaos isn’t coal or oil. It’s methane gas — rebranded in recent decades by the industry as liquified natural gas (LNG). What is called LNG is mostly methane, a gas that has 80 times more warming power than carbon dioxide. Not only is methane gas a dangerous climate pollutant, it is also a bad business bet. It faces a money-losing glut amid competition from renewables: Europe is aiming to have 45% of its energy from renewables by 2030 and Asian environmental organizations like CEED Philippines reject the idea that their region must switch from coal to gas and then to renewables. Instead, they present the proof that renewables can — and must — scale now.
A methane gas pipeline explodes every two days in the U.S., on average. The build-out of methane gas facilities is also happening in Black, Brown and Indigenous communities in the Gulf South that have for decades been dealing with the toxic impacts of petrochemicals. Methane gas is not a transition fuel, it is a fossil fuel that we cannot afford to expand.
Despite the deaths and explosions, banks continue to fund this fossil fuel, with 25-plus export projects being proposed in the U.S. Gulf alone, up from the four currently operating. One of the most dangerous facilities — the Rio Grande Valley Project by NextDecade — just announced that due to support from banks like JP Morgan Chase it has enough financing, despite French banks pulling out. JP Morgan Chase has showered the methane gas sector with $8 billion since the Paris Agreement.
While the Esto’k Gna people of the Comecrudo Carrizo Tribe in Brownsville, Texas, can’t go outside because of the heat, they are fighting to stop this project on their sacred ancestral lands, which are also at risk of falling debris from SpaceX explosions. Yet banks and the government decided that a methane gas project that’s 984 acres and bigger than New York City’s Central Park should be built on the last deepwater port that is free from oil and petrochemical shipping on the Texas Gulf coast.
How many people have to die before banks understand that no more fossil fuel projects can be funded? When will they heed the world’s call for financing for climate mitigation, transition and adaptation instead of fossil fuel foolishness? What 1,000-year storm, flood or fire will happen before they move as fast as the world needs them to? How many times will they be complicit in violating Indigenous sovereignty and human rights before listening to the people who are dying from the heat and extreme weather?
Banks must urgently realign their financing toward a future that doesn’t kill tens of thousands of people all over the globe and put a third of the U.S. under a death wave of heat. They should first stop financing any fossil fuel expansion, especially deceptive methane gas projects. They should instead be part of the solution and finance the renewables the world needs to survive.
Learn more about the vital work Rainforest Action Network does at RAN.org.
Posted on January 3, 2024
Our December grantees thank you for your support
Each month, CREDO members vote on how we distribute funding to three incredible nonprofits. In December, CREDO members voted to distribute our monthly donation among the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and Common Cause.
These donations are made possible by CREDO customers and the revenue they generate by using our services. The distribution depends entirely on the votes of CREDO members like you. And for that, our December grant recipients thank you.
Center for Biological Diversity
“Thank you for helping the Center with your vote for nature. Together, we can save our wildlife, wild places. Thanks to you, we’ll fight hard against corporate interests who want to pollute our oceans, log our forests or drill for dirty fossil fuels.” – Kierán Suckling, Executive Director, Center for Biological Diversity
To learn more, visit www.biologicaldiversity.org.
Center for Disaster Philanthropy
“We appreciate CREDO, its subscribers and the many donors who have contributed to CDP for putting their trust in us to do what we can to support equitable long-term disaster recovery.” – Patricia McIlreavy, President and CEO, Center for Disaster Philanthropy
To learn more, visit disasterphilanthropy.org.
Common Cause
“Thank you so much for your engagement and support…we’re grateful. CREDO members like you fuel our work to defend and nourish our most valuable asset — our democracy — and protect the will of the people.” – Marilyn Carpinteyro, Interim Co-President, Common Cause
To learn more, visit www.commoncause.org.
Now check out the three groups we are funding in January, and cast your vote to help distribute our donations.
CREDO members who use our products are the reason why we are able to make these donations each month. Learn more about CREDO Mobile, the carrier with a conscience.
Posted on January 2, 2024
Vote for Public Counsel, Rainforest Action Network and She Should Run this January
Every month, CREDO members vote to distribute our monthly grant to three incredible progressive causes – and every vote makes a difference. This January, you can support Public Counsel, Rainforest Action Network and She Should Run.
Public Counsel
Public Counsel seeks justice through direct legal services, promotes healthy and resilient communities through education and outreach, and supports community-led efforts to transform unjust systems through litigation and policy advocacy.
Funding from CREDO members will help Public Counsel provide free legal services to a wide range of low-income individuals and communities, including women, immigrants, veterans, foster youth, people experiencing homelessness, and micro-entrepreneurs.
Rainforest Action Network
RAN challenges corporate power exploiting forests, the climate, and human rights, through campaigns based on meticulous research, creative strategy, direct action, and fierce solidarity with communities fighting for justice all over the world.
RAN takes on the world’s biggest banks, insurers, and brands, to fight for policy shifts ending finance for fossil fuels and forest-risk commodities destroying rainforests, and centering the demands of Indigenous and frontline communities.
She Should Run
She Should Run is a nonpartisan nonprofit working to drastically increase the number of women considering a run for public office. We serve women from all walks of life who don’t see the potential of their political power but should.
Funding from CREDO Mobile will enable She Should Run to reach women in the places and spaces where they are already leading, and build programming for the top-of-the-funnel consideration that our research has proven women want and need.
Your vote this month will determine how we divide our monthly donations among these three progressive groups. Be sure to cast your vote to support one, two or all three by January 31.
CREDO members who use our products and services everyday are the reason we are able to make these donations each month. Learn more about CREDO Mobile and join our movement.
Posted on January 1, 2024
She Should Run works to increase the number of women considering a run for public office
Note from the CREDO Mobile team: This January, She Should Run is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO Mobile community will help She Should Run in its mission to build a community of women who are curious about the possibilities of public leadership.
Read this important blog post about She Should Run’s critical work, then visit CREDODonations.com and cast your vote to help send funding to She Should Run to support its efforts — and the efforts of our other outstanding January grantees.
In November, we released The State of Women: 2023 Multiplier Report and Roadmap, a comprehensive guide drawing on insights from extensive data gathered from a wide-ranging network of women nationwide. Utilizing data collected from She Should Run participants and research conducted between 2020 and 2023, we found that most women — across demographics and ideologies — need multiple points and types of encouragement over several years in order to consider running for office.
“The women running today did not wake up yesterday or even last year and decide they were going to run for office,” said She Should Run founder and CEO Erin Loos Cutraro. “2018’s ‘Year of the Woman’ was an anomaly. We haven’t seen that type of momentum for women’s representation since. In order to see more women running in the next election and beyond, we need to engage in the long-game work of planting seeds to inspire women now, to push them to consider putting themselves on the ballot in the future.”
Most of the women who are on the ballot in 2024 were inspired to run for office years ago. To see more women running in the future, our report calls on the U.S. to ditch traditional recruitment models and gatekeeper rhetoric that dictate only wealthy people, political insiders and those who have been planning a run since 1st grade have what it takes to lead.
The State of Women: 2023 Multiplier Report and Roadmap outlines the critical need to meet women where they really are, in communities and workplaces across our nation, and the four steps we must take to see more women running in future elections:
- Make it obvious and commonplace: Persistently deliver our message to women with vast leadership potential who are overlooked in traditional political recruitment.
- Make it easy and approachable: Dismantle perceptions around what it takes to become an elected official by offering honest resources and simple steps that allow a woman to dip her toe in the water.
- Make it relatable and compelling: Provide a wide range of resources that adapt to the interests and needs of women, focusing on their leadership development rather than candidate training.
- Make it inspiring and infectious: Mobilize passionate leaders to multiply the number of women considering elected office through honest, open connections.
You can download the Multiplier Roadmap here. You can learn more about She Should Run’s vital work at SheShouldRun.org.
Posted on January 1, 2024
Public Counsel empowers communities and advances justice
Note from the CREDO Mobile team: This January, Public Counsel is among three amazing groups that will receive a share of our monthly grant. Funding from the CREDO Mobile community will help Public Counsel in its mission to advance civil rights and racial and economic justice, and to amplify the power of its clients through comprehensive legal advocacy.
Read this important blog post about Public Counsel’s critical work, then visit CREDODonations.com and cast your vote to help send funding to Public Counsel to support its efforts — and the efforts of our other outstanding January grantees.
Public Counsel, a nonprofit law firm headquartered in Los Angeles, has been at the forefront of advancing civil rights and fostering economic and racial justice for more than half a century. Our dedicated team of attorneys, social workers, paralegals, organizers and volunteers work tirelessly to ensure justice is not just a privilege for the few but instead is accessible to all.
Our approach to creating change is unique and multifaceted. We believe in the power of coordinated advocacy, where our one-on-one legal services inform — and are amplified by — our impact litigation, policy advocacy and community education. This synergy helps to ensure that we tackle the most pressing systemic injustices harming our communities.
For example, this past year, we won groundbreaking tenant protections for Los Angeles residents and stepped up to defend these protections in court. We also upheld the largest affordable housing ballot initiative passed in the city’s history, joining with community partners to ward off multiple legal challenges. In addition, we held the State of California accountable for mishandling its COVID-19 Rent Relief program, partnering with community groups to secure fair access to the program for tens of thousands of applicants.
Another crucial aspect of our work is power building. We align our legal advocacy with grassroots movements to enact change, challenge unjust laws and achieve lasting results. We also focus on being accountable to our clients, making sure our legal work prioritizes their needs, goals and personal expertise.
For example, for over a decade we have worked to amplify the power of street vendors to legalize sidewalk vending across California and, more recently, to challenge unlawful vending restrictions that criminalize and harm their livelihoods. Across California, we partner with community groups to advocate for a more equitable education system that leaves no student behind. This approach to our work helps uplift the agency, dignity and power of the communities we serve.
Finally, our organization was founded on a pro bono legal service model and volunteer mobilization is at our core. With the support of thousands of volunteers, Public Counsel can annually provide legal representation to more than 10,000 individuals, families, nonprofits and small businesses. For instance, at our most recent National Adoption Day — with the help of dozens of pro bono attorneys — we finalized nearly 60 adoptions and ensured that each of the children left the foster care system connected to the services they need to thrive.
Being selected by CREDO Mobile is a significant honor for us. It’s an opportunity to expand our reach and deepen our impact. Your vote and support can help us continue our critical work. Together, we can create an equitable society where justice is not just a promise but a lived reality for all.
Thank you for considering Public Counsel as your choice for CREDO’s monthly grant. Your support means the world to us and to the communities we serve.
You can learn more about our work at PublicCounsel.org.
Posted on December 27, 2023
5 ways to be a more conscious consumer in 2024
There are times (like now) when hope gets hard. When it feels that our individual actions—ethical and consistent as they may be—are not enough to turn our world in the right direction. This is understandable. Certainly we’ve got a lot of challenges ahead of us. But, working together, we can address them and solve them. Numerous actions by individuals can collectively make a difference.
Consider for example, plant-based eating. It’s hugely beneficial for the environment. Recent research shows that a vegan diet cuts emissions, water pollution and land use by 75% compared to diets that include over 100 grams of meat per day. A plant-based diet reduces wildlife destruction by 66% and water use by 54%. Now consider that the number of vegans in the U.S. tripled from 2004 to 2019, and that 1.5 billion people worldwide avoid foods made with meat.
The takeaway is this: individual choices do matter. The decisions we make as consumers—whether it’s the foods we eat, the clothes we wear or the cars we drive—do make a difference.
Here are five ways you can be a more conscious consumer and change the world for the better with your purchasing power in 2024.
Avoid Amazon
It’s not easy. The ecommerce giant dominates online shopping. A quarter of Americans now shop at Amazon at least once a week and half of Americans have an Amazon Prime account.
But options do exist and they’re worth looking for, especially when you learn about Amazon’s impact on the planet. It produced 71 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2021, up a whopping 40% from 2019. Also in 2021, Amazon generated enough plastic waste to cover the Earth in 800 layers, despite the fact that the company “would have no problem” switching to plastic-free packaging, according to former Amazon executive Rachel Johnson Greer. “It’s really a question of will.”
If you find information like that ethically suffocating, there are other ecommerce sites that offer a wide range of products and do it in an ecofriendly way. They usually pack with less plastic or with sustainable alternatives, offset their shipping emissions and focus on earth-conscious items and brands. Their prices might be a little higher but they don’t inflict a large hidden cost on our planet.
DoneGood has clothing, bags and totes, home accessories, kitchenware, jewelry, self-care and a lot more. Its team vets every brand to make sure it pays decent wages, empowers communities and has ecofriendly practices.
There is eBay, where you can shrink your shopping footprint by purchasing secondhand. Check out eBay Refurbished, which sells reconditioned products up to 50% off the list price, with warranties as good or better than the original warranties. Also Etsy, the global marketplace that supports independent creators of crafts, housewares, art, soap, T-shirts and much more. In 2020, it generated almost $4 billion in income for small businesses.
For books, there’s Bookshop.org, where you’ll find just about any book you can find at Amazon—and the community feeling that makes your local bookstore such a joy, albeit in virtual form. Bookshop.org supports independent booksellers around the world. It knows local bookstores are vital hubs that foster culture, curiosity and a love of reading, and it’s committed to helping them. Since 2020, Bookshop.org has raised more than $28 million for independent bookstores. Plus, we have a CREDO Mobile Bookshop on the site which showcases recommendations from our grantee partners, the 2023 Book Award winners, and more. When you make a purchase at the CREDO Mobile store, you’ll also help generate donations for the progressive nonprofits we fund. (We receive a commission on every book purchased at our affiliate shop.)
Do your research
You can’t know all that’s involved in the making of every item you buy. But you can Google the products you buy often to see if the companies that make them behave in a responsible way.
Chocolate, for example. You might enjoy a chocolate candy made by Mars, Hershey or Nestle. If you do a little searching, you’ll discover that chocolate companies like these have a dark secret: child slavery. Seventy percent of the world’s cocoa comes from West Africa and many of the cocoa plantations there use child slaves. So companies that source cocoa from West Africa can be linked directly to child slavery. Instead, choose an ethical brand. There are a lot of them on the market now.
Check the label
Labels can help you make ethical choices, especially when you’re buying clothes and food. Avoid fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M and Forever 21. They have an enormous footprint. Fast fashion is the world’s second-most-polluting industry, after oil and gas. It produces around 10% of global carbon emissions, which is more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
As for food, many of the labels on it mean little. For example, there are no formal FDA regulations governing use of the word “natural.” The term “free range” is meaningless, as Vox reported recently. An undercover investigator at Tyson Foods, the largest chicken company in the U.S., called conditions at one Tyson farm “a living nightmare.”
But there are some food labels that can tell you a lot. Here are a few you see often at the market and what they mean.
Fairtrade Certified indicates the product is certified by the worldwide monitoring group Fairtrade International and means it was made according to strict standards that protect the lives and livelihoods of farmers, fishers and other producer communities, as well as the environment.
USDA Organic shows that an agricultural product was made in accordance with USDA organic standards that require production methods to “integrate cultural, biological and mechanical practices that foster cycling of resources, promote ecological balance and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation and genetic engineering may not be used.”
Non-GMO Project Verified means a food meets the standards of the Non-GMO Project, which is dedicated to helping consumers avoid GMOs. It doesn’t guarantee that a product is free of GMOs—it can’t, because the risk of GMO contamination is ever-present today—but it does ensure that a product is made according to best practices for GMO avoidance.
Use ethical-shopping apps
You can use your phone when you go shopping to make more conscious choices—and there are a number of apps that can help you. Here are a few:
Buycott is an app that scans barcodes and provides details on products and manufacturers so that you can make an informed decision.
Ethical Barcode scans the barcodes on supermarket items and gives you information on the companies that make them. It provides ratings so you can learn if the products you’re buying do damage to the environment or animals.
Good on You scores over 3,000 fashion brands according to their impact on people, animals and the planet. It researches companies extensively and gives you an easy-to-understand rating, from “Great” to “We avoid.”
Switch to CREDO Mobile
The phone company you choose matters too. Join CREDO Mobile and you can make real change in the world just by using our service. Because when you do, you’ll raise vital funding for nonprofit groups fighting for the causes you believe in, groups like Earthjustice, Planned Parenthood and Social Security Works.
To date, we’ve donated over $95 million to these and hundreds of other progressive groups. The donations cost our customers nothing extra—but they mean everything to the nonprofits that rely on us.
Switch to CREDO Mobile and you’ll get the good feeling that comes with knowing you support the causes important to you, simply by using your phone. You’ll also get all you want from a phone company: competitive rates, great deals on new devices and nationwide coverage on the top-rated, most reliable network.
