Etheco is an ethical shopping engine. It’s a bit like the price-comparison services offered by Pricerunner, Kelkoo and Froogle, except that rather than financial cost, the products are rated on their ethical and ecological costs.

It’s a great service for someone, like me, looking to kit out a house, as you can include your budget in your searches, to ensure you get the most ethical product you can afford, and don’t end up getting ripped off by spending more than you should simply because of a product’s green credentials.

It looks like it’s still early days for Etheco, as the range of products on offer at the moment, which is split between ‘Whitegoods’ and ‘Energy’, is fairly narrow. It does let me see, though, that a Whirlpool washing machine with a B energy rating is only 69% ‘ethical’, and will cost me £199, but for 50p less I can get an A+ rated Hoover washer that scores 88% on the ethical scale. I know which one I’ll be going for.

Although the site is a little vague about how the score is totted up, it does claim that ‘the science bit is a little algorithm we developed that takes all the different factors for each product and turns them into the percentage score’. In a world where it’s difficult to know whether the buying choice you’re making is the ethical one or not, you have little choice but to take these things on trust.

Etheco is staffed by a team of just four, running the site ‘because we all believe that every little bit helps and the more people we can help to do their bit, the better things will be’, which is good enough reason for me to support them.

If you’d like to buy more ethical goods for your home, check out www.etheco.com

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