Tell us about The Ethicalist
The Ethicalist is a new digital platform in the UAE that will engage and inspire an audience who want to live their best life ethically and sustainably.
We deliver compelling news stories, empowering features and reports along with fresh ideas on sustainable fashion, natural beauty, conscious travel, plant-based food and more! Our aim is to create conversations but also galvanise real, lasting change.
Our motto is: Changing attitudes one article, one story and one person at a time.
A little bit about the Founder / story of how you started out?
My name is Anthea Ayache and I am the founder of The Ethicalist. I was a humanitarian journalist for several years writing and I used to broadcast reports on stories that I believed needed to be told, such as girls’ education in Afghanistan, and the refugee crisis caused by the war in Syria. I also covered a lot of conservation work highlighting the plight of endangered animals.
When the publication I was working for decided to change their angle away from news and towards lifestyle I decided the time was right to move on. I wrestled with the fact there was no outlet dedicated to this type of journalism and so in 2017, I decided to launch The Ethicalist.
While we were in the process of building and developing the concept, sustainability featured so heavily in the reasoning behind the stories that it became more and more apparent that this was the true calling for the platform. The planet needed our attention and we wanted to help people realise the urgency of the situation.
We were ahead of the curve in the UAE and realised the time wasn’t quite right. I went away and became a mother to two gorgeous girls (I underwent three failed IVF attempts during the short life cycle of The (original) Ethicalist) and even though I was madly busy with motherhood, the idea for the platform was still calling me.
What impact is The Ethicalist trying to make?
Most people are aware that the planet is in serious danger and the statistics can no longer be ignored. Nearly every aspect of the way we as a race are living is unsustainable – from our reliance on fossil fuels, overfishing our seas to extinction, our increasingly untenable meat and dairy consumption, our fast fashion addiction… the list goes on and on.
It’s terrifying when you delve into the details of our negative impact on the planet, but we don’t want people to feel helpless in the face of this. The Ethicalist wants to raise awareness of these issues and provide hopeful solutions so people can be engaged to create positive change in their lifestyles. If possible, we’d like our readers to gasp at the way we live but be propelled to do better.
And we’re not advocating huge changes – we are showing that you can make a difference with even small, realistic changes. Like our motto says, we want to change attitudes one article, one story, one person at a time. If we manage to convert one reader per article, our job is done.
What sets The Ethicalist apart?
It’s wonderful to see so many news outlets and publications focusing on sustainability these days. Climate action has become a buzzword and we should be grateful for that, when something is fashionable the masses get on board and that’s what the planet needs.
We, however, are the only digital magazine with a focus solely on this topic in the region. We have modelled ourselves on a typical lifestyle glossy covering similar verticals – fashion, food, health & wellness, beauty, travel etc – but under one all-encompassing umbrella: sustainability.
We want people to know that you can still live beautifully while living a life of positive impact. We are not a magazine for perfect people, we are a lifestyle guide for average people to make positive changes in their day to day lives.
As a new company, where do you aspire to be in 5 years?
It’s very important that we find the financial means to keep the magazine delivering stories to a growing audience. The fantastic contributors that we have relay events that are happening across the globe that need to be heard. We hope to continue getting the word out to wider audiences while also growing a team that can bring breaking news stories from across the world in multimedia formats as they happen.
In five years, the sustainability landscape will be tenfold what It is now. Our aim is to still be here engaging converted audiences with more and more stories of positive impacts and smart changes.
By that time hopefully a majority will be on board with the concept that living in a way that is kind to our planet is a necessity. This idea should no longer be reserved for marginalised communities, we all must become conscious citizens if we want to pass on an ecological utopia to our children because, as the adage says, there is No Planet B.