Submitted by you:

Statistics show that more people want to shop sustainably than actually do, but the main barriers are knowledge and trust. Buy Better Mall is an online retailer and mobile app changing the way things are produced in the hope of making ethical, sustainable shopping the norm. It does this by gathering ‘trustworthy’ brands, such as Patagonia, into one easily searchable and filterable database.

A collection of socially responsible stores are filtered by what you want, how you want it and where you want to buy it, including that all-important social value – which is classified by five types of sustainability: Fair Trade, B-Corporation, Lifetime Warranty, Second Hand, and Cause Based Companies. US-based, the site ships globally.

“On the most basic level, sustainability is a moral duty we have to the children of the world,” founder Greg Kamphuis explains. “Sustainability means stability, abundance, health and justice, as well as the awareness of others and how we affect them.”

The objective is to transform the everyday shopper’s mentality of wanting everything cheap, quick and easy into a ‘better buy’ approach. Why pay the high price of big chain superstores when you can pay the actual price from a local retailer? A recent study carried out by Neilson confirms that the majority of people want to buy better and will do so if given the chance.

The Mall’s next step is to generate a large enough user base to support a crowdfunding push that will allow the ethical shopping alternative to add more functionality, such as a geolocation business search, so that shoppers can find stores physically near to them – investing back into the local community and creating a socially conscious and sustainable economy.

If you are interested in shopping more sustainably, check out Buy Me Once, the website that is asking us to rethink our lazy, inefficient purchasing patterns – for the good of the planet, and our wallets, too.