Canberrans are less concerned about shopping ethically and less willing to pay more for ethical products than shoppers in other states, despite the ACT having the highest median income nationally, a survey has found.
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Nationally, 85 per cent of Australians said they wanted businesses to be more transparent about the origins and sustainability of their goods, compared to 68 per cent of respondents in the ACT.
When asked whether they were willing to pay more for ethical products, only 32 per cent of Canberrans said yes, 10 per cent less than NSW residents, according to the survey of 1002 Australians conducted by parcel delivery service CouriersPlease.
But the owner of Canberra's Redbrick cafes, Tim Manning, said he found the survey results surprising, with his customers prepared to pay a premium for an ethical product.
"I charge what I think is fair value for what we do. Generally, for a cup of coffee, that's 50 cents to $1 more than most other places, and we're still busy," Mr Manning said.
Mr Manning said the Redbrick team had asked a lot of questions about the origins of the coffee the business sells: who grows the coffee? How is it grown? How were the cherries harvested, and how were the beans processed?
Mr Manning said he wanted as much detail as he could get about the entire supply chain.
"Our focus is on quality, knowing that if the operators are doing things well it generally translates into them paying better prices for labour, because they need more skilled people to help produce the type of coffee they're trying to produce," Mr Manning said.
But the way he set up his business and established a supply chain wasn't driven by consumer demand, it was a personal decision.
"I think it is a value, and a decision that businesses make based on their own principles," he said.
Buying a coffee is a quick and regular transaction and Mr Manning said customers did not necessarily take time to explore the sustainable practices behind each small purchase.
"I don't like to say it, but I don't think the majority of customers place a huge amount of importance on how everything's put together before they consume it," he said.
Mr Manning said the quality of the product at Redbrick is the point of differentiation for his customers.
Some coffee roasteries in Australia have started printing the price they paid for green coffee beans on bags of retail coffee, in an effort to increase the transparency of their supply chain. Mr Manning said he decided against this approach because it would be easily misinterpreted by customers, and it could affect the producers who sold the green beans.
"We've had this conversation with producers we work with in Brazil - it's not my information, it's actually commercial information from another business that I'd be disclosing, and even by disclosing that information to my customers I might be undermining the producer because they might be selling that coffee at a different price in a different market."
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Mr Manning hoped that by creating warm, interesting cafes and providing relaxed customer service, customers would feel comfortable asking questions about the business's ethics.
"We're not trying - for want of another word - to preach to customers about the coffee we're using. We want to engage with them, make them value the space and deliver coffee they really like drinking, and then that opens up the conversation to tell them about where the coffee has come from and why they are actually enjoying it," he said.
The survey's findings surprised the founder of ethical online marketplace Oz Fair Trade, Qinnie Wang, who set up her business as a passion project from her living room in Canberra.
"I always thought because Canberra has the highest median income in Australia it would have more interest," Ms Wang said.
Ms Wang became passionate about ethical supply chains and promoting "trade not aid" after a trip to South East Asia, where she met highly skilled makers who struggled to earn a living.
After hosting stalls at markets around Canberra, Ms Wang was disappointed by how slow turnover was, compared to markets interstate.
"I've done markets in Sydney and they were great, but [in] Canberra fewer people come to visit markets in general and I think people mostly go to markets for food," she said.
Ms Wang said people who wanted to learn more about the sustainability and ethics of their favourite businesses should just ask.
