Ethical companies claim to care about the environment and show responsibility for their actions. The most famous of these ethical companies is the Body Shop, founded in 1976 by Anita Roddick. It claims to promote ethical trade and business through initiatives such as Trade Not Aid and Community Trade. But do they practice what they claim?

In 1994 the journalist Jon Entine investigated the Body Shop, and produced the article "Shattered Image: Is the Body Shop Too Good To Be True?", which was published in the journal Business Ethics. One of the allegations it made is that some Body Shop products contain non-renewable petrochemicals, including toxic formaldehyde (1,2). The Body Shop's claim to be against animal testing has also come under fire. The McSpotlight website, in it's "beyond McDonald's" section, highlights how the Body Shop only bans ingredients if they have been tested for less than five years, and how ingredients that have been tested for reasons other than cosmetics are accepted anyway (3).
The Body Shop's "Trade Not Aid" scheme, which claimed to aid developing countries, only accounts for a small amount of products made for the Body Shop, less than 1% of total turnover (2,3,4). The Body Shop claimed that harvesting brazil nut oil has enabled Kayapo Indians to use the rainforest sustainably, protecting it from damage by mining and logging compainies. But only a small number of the Kayapo are involved, creating conflict within the community (2,3). The McSpotlight accuses the Body Shop of being like every other multinational corporation by "fuelling consumption at the Earth's expense", and its main purpose is for "making lots of money for its rich shareholders" (3). The Body Shop also pays its workers at minimum wage, and does not allow unionisation of its workers (3), a policy not unlike that of McDonald's. Another way in which the Body Shop behaves in a manner similar to the McDonald's Corporation is by silencing their critics with the threat of lawsuits, a tactic know as "corporate censorship" (1,3,4).

The Body Shop may have started with the best of intentions, even though some have accused Anita Roddick of stealing the concept from a Californian company founded in 1970, which at the time was also called "The Body Shop" (2). However, in a capitalist system, one rule exists above all others: make more profit or die. This applies to the Body Shop just as much as it applies to McDonald's or Microsoft, and in the never ending quest for profit, even the greatest of principles will by compromised or ignored altogether.

References:

(1) http://www.jonentine.com/articles/business_brawl.htm
(2) http://www.brazzil.com/p19dec96.htm
(3) http://www.mcspotlight.org/beyond/companies/bodyshop.html
(4) http://flag.blackened.net/intanark/faq/secE7.html