Me! I’m Gill and 2 years ago, after spending ten years raising children, I opened the ethical grocer in Dulwich Hill. I’ve been vegetarian for almost 30 years and I’m passionate about promoting healthy eating habits which are sustainable to our planet. I’ve been fact checking and scrutinising labels for years. I believe you are what you eat and that the quality of the foods you put in your body make a huge difference to your mental and physical wellbeing.

I also know what a minefield of misinformation is out there and how hard it is to break out of the supermarket cycle without blowing your budget. Information is power and I believe that the more info we have about the foods we buy and consume, the greater the opportunity we have to invest in a healthier lifestyle. When it comes to our weekly shop, we all have the power to vote with our wallets for a more ethical, sustainable food future.

To that end, all of us at the ethical grocer make it a rule not to believe what hear about food, we search out the answers. In an age where food is widely mislabelled, where potentially harmful ingredients are disguised in long lists of additives, and where you can’t be sure of the country of origin, you can trust us, we read the labels so you don’t have to.

Everything. My approach to buying stock is the same as when I buy for my household. I couldn’t enjoy my morning coffee if I thought someone else’s children had picked the beans, so you can rely on the fact that all our tea, coffee and cocoa products are and will continue to be Fair Traded.

I try to follow the ‘act global, shop local’ adage but there are some exceptions. Our basmati rice comes from a Pakistani farmer’s co-op. I personally think that growing white rice in a desert country is immoral. I can’t help thinking our drought-stricken farmers may agree. Brown rice is a whole different matter. We have naturally rain-fed brown rice, grown bio-dynamically by Demeter here in Auatralia.
All our grocery lines are either organic or organic in conversion. This means produced without the use of chemicals or harsh processes but not yet certified.
All our grains and flours are from Demeter and are bio-dynamically produced.

That’s what you get out of us but we also try to leave a low carbon footprint. We reuse, recycle or repurpose everything that is no longer useful. If you join our box scheme, you’ll receive your order in a repurposed fruit or veg box. We discount any fresh food leftover on Tuesday rather than let it go off. Anything that is left we donate to various small charitable causes. We have composting on site and also use community composting at Addison Road. Out of date stock we either give to Fresh Friday customer as free samples or we donate to the Addison Road Food Co-op.

Many of the ethical grocer‘s suppliers are just as concerned as us regarding the reliability of organic certification. the ethical grocer regularly sources food from Honest to Goodness, Eco Farms, Sacred Grounds and Demeter Mills. Each country that we source groceries from has an organic standard, and these are rigorously checked on a regular basis.