Ethics and Environmental Issues Flashcards
What are the advantages of being ethical for an organisation?
Awards can be granted for being ethical, which can be used for promotional purposes.
Businesses with an ethical reputation can attract customers and quality staff who agree with their principles.
What are the disadvantages of being ethical for an organisation?
Audits are needed to ensure standards are met and maintained, which may be time consuming.
Decision-making could be more complex and time consuming as many possible solutions may not be appropriate because they are not ethical.
What is fairtrade?
Fair trade is when suppliers of raw materials receive a guaranteed and fair price for their goods. Fairtrade also ensures that employees in the supply chain are treated fairly.
What are the advantages of being fairtrade?
Businesses are awarded the fairtrade mark on their products, which can appeal to customers.
Stocking fairtrade goods demonstrates the retailer’s ethical commitment to its customers.
Businesses that are fairtrade have a positive impact on the producers of the raw materials with which they work and have a better relationship with the supply chain.
What are the disadvantages of fairtrade?
Losing a fairtrade mark after gaining one will result in bad publicity.
Fairtrade products are often more expensive.
The business has a more limited choice of suppliers.
What are the advantages of a business helping the environment?
The organisation plays a part in looking after the environment that will hopefully sustain their activities for the future.
Having a positive effect on the environment will ensure the organisation gains a positive reputation.
Awards can be granted for being ‘environmentally friendly’, which can be used for promotional purposes.
Renewable energies save costs in the long run as fuels such as oil, petrol or gas don’t need to be paid for.
What are the disadvantages of a business helping the environment?
Investment in environmentally friendly measures will be expensive in the short term e.g. installing solar panels.
New procedures may have to be adapted to be more environmentally friendly, which can take time.
Most environmentally friendly procedures rely on the natural environment, which may not be sufficient e.g. lack of wind, solar energy etc.
What is animal welfare?
The moral considerations of an organisation need not only refers to how people are treated; increasingly these concerns are also around the treatment and wellbeing of animals.
What is carbon footprint?
This refers to the impact that using fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, has on the environment. They can do this by using renewable energy, using low emissions vehicles etc.
What is sustainable raw materials?
Being sustainable refers to ensuring that the raw materials used by a business activity are not being depleted.
What is waste?
Not only does committing to dealing with waste appropriately help the environment, it is a legal responsibility to store, transport and dispose of waste without harming the environment.
What is packaging?
As well as being part of good PR, the packaging of products should be designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible.
What are the ways packaging can be environmentally friendly?
Being reusable, meaning packaging can be used again in its current format e.g. ‘bags for life’
Being recyclable, meaning packaging can be recycled easily into something else, saving the use of fresh raw materials e.g. Lush recycle their plastic containers into scarves.
Being biodegradable, meaning used packaging can break down more easily.
