What dangerous chemicals are in your shopping bag? AskREACH's app will let you know from your smartphone.

Finding out a product’s or manufacturer’s track record on sustainability, climate change, fair labour and more often means consulting numerous apps and websites; hardly ideal for the time-poor shopper. The Ethical Barcode app looks to aggregate third party data on all these subjects but how effective is it? We put the app to the test.

Many shoppers probably do not want to their grocery dollars ending up in the pockets of defense companies. But it is not always so easy to see where our consumer coin ends up. The Buycott app aims to lay bare a brand’s affiliations in order to facilitate conscious consumption. But how reliable is this app? We tested it out.

Making ethical and sustainable decisions when we shop can be difficult. You're in the supermarket aisle and reach for a bottle of shampoo, asking yourself, has this product been made under fair labour conditions? Were the ingredients sustainably sourced and could any of them be harmful to health?

Donating when you shop is the new black: how the process of rounding up shopping bills to the nearest round sum is looking to turn all shoppers into charitable givers, one micro-donation at a time. But does it work?

Value Added Tax or Goods and Services Tax is often added on to the price of consumer products deemed non-essential. When buying our cosmetics, clothes and snackfoods many of us might not be aware of exactly where our money (and our taxes) ends up, particularly, that some of it goes towards funding the weapons industry.

Still haven't found that perfect present? Don't want to buy something that will just end up gathering dust? Here's our pick of the best ethical, eco-friendly and meaningful gifts around.

Goodwill and charity come with expiry dates. And NGOs recognize this more than anybody else in their quest to be self-sustainable. Non-profits increasingly have started to think about depending lesser and lesser on the traditional donation model, through offering products and services that can bring in some revenue.

The team behind myGREENkart has scoured the land to make shopping for ethically-made, non-toxic products ridiculously simple, offering a range of organic, sustainable goods via their online portal myGREENkart.com