Ethical Commitments

Here at MonkeyShine we do everything possible to ensure our products do not harm the environment or the workforce that prodece them. To qualify and verify this commitment we are proud partners of Ethical Junction.

From our wooden toys to our baby accessories we do everything we can to ensure compliance.

The Ethical Junction Network provides information on positively screened companies and organisations and links you through to ethical and sustainable products and services provided by our members.

Ethical Junction Network came in to existence in 1999. The website was intended to serve as portal for all things ethical – from consumers looking for organic compost to ethical businesses looking for finance, Ethical Junction was set up to provide a universal ethical resource to the public. Its constitution as a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, ensures 100% of any profit that is generated by Ethical Junction will be donated annually to causes that promote sustainable living. For the first few years at least, all surpluses will be donated to Action for Sustainable Living which is written into the Community Interest ‘Asset Lock’ as beneficiary of any assets.Income comes exclusively from our members, who are annually screened against our ethically positive criteria. This revenue is in the form of annual membership fees, job adverts and sponsorship of sections of the site. The Co-operative Financial Services (Co-operative Bank, Smile, CIS) have joined forces with Ethical Junction and this will lead to many new opportunities.Ethical Junction is currently undergoing a comprehensive makeover to improve the service to its members and users. This new web site includes EthicalSearch® our screened ethical search engine, enhanced listings, a powerful affiliate hub, a jobs section, a News Room collecting stories from the whole sector and many other new and useful features. Ethical Junction has been around for 7 years now, slowly but surely building a solid and dependable brand - it receives around 35,000 visitors per month and has a Google rating of 7/10. It has helped hundreds of ethical businesses gain a higher profile since it began. Moving from a Membership Organisation to a Member Led OrganisationOur next phase is to bring members and experts together from all the main areas covered by our network, to collaborate, share experience and work towards not just growing the ‘ethical (and sustainable) economy’ but ensuring that the values and roots remain strongly informing the process of change.We want the direction of Ethical Junction to be led by our members. We have already called on many skills provided by members to develop the network and site so far and only want this active participation to grow.Moving from UK wide to Regional, City, and Local levelsIt is our intention over the next 6 months, to work with our members to set up ‘local directories’ so we might see as one of the first… www.manchester.ethical-junction.org and then potentially www.chorlton.ethical-junction.org . These web sites will ensure that products and services are purchased ideally from the most local ethical suppliers – helping to reduce delivery mileage as well as promoting local sustainability. Whenever someone searches in say Chorlton for an item and it is not available within a reasonable distance, this information will be recorded and start to generate statistics on demand which might help to encourage a local supplier to set-up. One of our new developments is a sophisticated Affiliate Hub, which will allow the local directories to easily set-up and maintain a large number of affiliate schemes and even feed into community ‘bulk-buying clubs’.The networks connected to the networksMany of ethical Junction network members are long established ethical businesses and organisations with their own networks of thousands of customers and friends. The combined networks must reach the vast majority of people involved in the ethical and sustainability field in the UK. The founders and staff of these organisations are very committed, with, in many cases a large professional and personal sphere of influence. Highly Positive FeedbackRecently an email to members gained a positive response to a call ‘for collaboration on a number of projects and developments’ – we got around 100 members responding within 48 hours. We have gauged a very high interest from members to get involved in ethical and sustainability projects.

It seems lots of us still want to change the world!