Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) Director Dan Rees yesterday (1 November) called on the growing numbers of ethical consumers in the UK to look beyond their shopping baskets and demand that companies embed ethical trade into their mainstream business practices.

Said Rees, "Despite the continued rise in ethical spending during the downturn, around the world, workers' wages have fallen in real terms. The harder you look, the harder it is to avoid the conclusion that our ethical spend is not yet making enough difference.

"To achieve the widespread improvements to the lives of hundreds of millions of workers that are so urgently needed, we need to start thinking bigger than simply what we're putting in our shopping baskets.

"It's not just one or two ethically labelled products in a shop we should be asking for. We should be insisting that ethics are mainstreamed into all the products a shop sells and all its business activities.

"And it's worth remembering that it's not just global companies who can influence workers' conditions. Governments should also ensure that the laws designed to protect workers' rights are enforced. Workers need employers who respect and observe the law. And workers themselves - who after all are best-placed to know what solutions are needed in their own workplaces - need to be allowed to form their own organisations and to bargain with their employers.

"These are the fundamental pillars on which to build more ethical global trade and yet they do not exist in many countries around the world.

"So where does this all leave us, the humble consumer?

"Well I think it makes us one crucial corner in a triangle of change - one that includes companies as well as government in the UK and abroad.

"And while the challenges are immense, we may have more power than we think.

"In fact, we need to stop thinking of ourselves as merely shoppers, but also as responsible people who can influence friends, neighbours and colleagues, organise communities, and lobby politicians so that businesses and policy-makers have a clear and pressing mandate to bring ethical trade into the mainstream of business and government.

 "Together as a society, we can collectively send the message to business and government alike: 'Yes I want ethics with that.' "

Rees was speaking at the 'Battle of Ideas 2009', a two-day festival of high-level, thought-provoking debate organised by the Institute of Ideas and hosted by the Royal College of Art.