20+ Best Amazon Alternatives for Ethical Online Shopping
Amazon, the company that catapulted founder Jeff Bezos to billionaire status (and to the edge of space), has long been touted as environmentally unfriendly; the company emits the same level of carbon emissions as the country of Norway, according to a report released by Amazon in 2019.
Its impact on both the environment and the lives of its workers has catalyzed conscious consumers to switch to alternative companies that are more ethical, environmentally friendly, and aligned with their personal values.
The good news about switching from Amazon is that there are plenty of options online to meet a variety of needs (not to mention all of the in-person, small business, and secondhand shopping you can do, too!)
By the way, some of the links in this article are affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you!
Reasons To Consider Amazon Alternatives:
There are a lot of reasons to consider minimizing or eliminating your support of Amazon. For the sake of simplicity, here’s a quick rundown:
- Amazon has a significant negative impact on the environment, despite its attempts to minimize (or greenwash) its carbon footprint.
- Amazon contributes to overconsumption, which harms both laborers and the environment.
- Amazon has historically treated its employees and contractors poorly (and knows it).
- Amazon doesn’t play fair with employees who want to unionize.
- Amazon collects data about businesses that sell on its site and then uses that data (and its monopoly powers) to develop, promote, and sell its own competing products.
- Amazon’s vast scale and capital have allowed it to dramatically lower prices (maybe even at a loss). This predatory pricing puts competitors out of business — and may be an antitrust issue.
- Amazon is full of more low-quality junk than ever.
- Amazon collects a lot of data about you.
- Because it is ubiquitous in daily life, Amazon all but forces small businesses to sell on its platform. Three-quarters of independent retailers say Amazon’s dominance is a major threat to their survival, and only 11% say they’ve had a positive selling experience on the platform.
- There are a lot of great products and services that simply aren’t available on Amazon — but are sold by independent sellers (like our Goodnewspaper, for example). By only shopping on Amazon, you’re missing out on the opportunity to support a local or independent business.
Our Criteria
We’ve outlined our favorite online Amazon alternatives for you. But first, here is the criteria we followed in recommending these brands and marketplaces to you:
- Sustainability & Ethics: The brands on this list have made clear their commitment to the environmental and to fair labor practices. Many have third-party certifications to back up these commitments.
- Accessibility & Experience: We know that many use Amazon for its delivery speed, variety of products, accessibility in rural communities, cheap pricing, and wide range of products. We aimed to find alternatives that offer at least some similar benefits to help consumers who must prioritize affordability and accessibility.
Reminder: It’s still progress if you’re able to switch away from Amazon for some of your purchases, if not all of them.
The Best Alternatives to Amazon For Shopping
Package Free Shop
Category: Sustainable home, beauty, and kitchen
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Package Free Shop is an online marketplace committed to helping shoppers find the most sustainable versions of the items they use daily.
Additionally, Package Free’s shipping materials are 100% plastic-free (making the company’s name very fitting). The retailer also donates to like-minded organizations and touts policies and principles that are thoughtful to both people and the planet.
You can also set up “Subscribe & Save” orders through Package Free, just like you might on Amazon.
Thrive Market
Category: Grocery, household, and personal care
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: On Thrive Market, you can become a Member for roughly $5-$12/month (depending on if you pay annually or monthly) and easily do all your shopping through its site.
Our editors found that it’s easier to shop here because you don’t have to think as hard about your shopping decisions, knowing that a majority of the brand’s offerings are already aligned with your values. It also eliminates a lot of grocery trips, with everything you need showing up in one weekly shipment.
Thrive Market works to ethically source all of its products, ensures that 90% of waste in its warehouses is recycled, composted, or reused, and offers carbon-neutral shipping in sustainable packaging. The company is also a certified B Corp.
Hive
Category: Grocery and personal care
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Hive is an online grocery marketplace that sticks to five core values: Ingredient integrity, responsible production, clean packaging, leading change (like social and industry impact efforts), and “raveworthy” quality. Each product page details which of these criteria are met — as well as how and why.
Hive also has a robust recycling guide for the various kinds of packaging you might encounter in your grocery products, like cans, cartons, and more. Hard-to-recycle items can be processed through TerraCycle — Hive will even send you a prepaid envelope to do so!
Misfits Market
Category: Grocery
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Misfits Market is an online grocer that makes high-quality food more affordable and accessible and helps break the cycle of food waste.
By working directly with farmers and food producers, the brand “rescues” food that is still perfectly good to eat, saving shoppers up to 40% compared to traditional grocery options (like Amazon delivery or ordering through Whole Foods).
They also offer other pantry staples, wine, and grocery items and do not require you to pay a set subscription fee. Once you sign up, you can access the items offered in the market and add as few (as long as you meet the $35 order minimum) or as many items as you’d like.
→ Check out our full review of Misfits Market
Grove Collaborative
Category: Cleaning, personal care, and pantry staples
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Grove Collaborative takes the ease of shopping for home essentials on Amazon and makes it ethical. The site exclusively offers products that meet all four of the brand’s core values: uncompromisingly healthy, beautifully effective, ethically produced, and cruelty-free.
The Grove Collaborative site (and app) makes it easy to order products and get regular refills shipped at an appropriate cadence. The company will never sneakily charge you for a new shipment without letting you know (three times) first.
Plus, all of Grove’s shipments are carbon neutral, and it’s also a certified B Corp.
Blueland
Category: Refillable soaps and cleaners
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Instead of buying pre-packaged cleaning products and soaps, Blueland offers refillable hand soap, as well as dish, laundry, bath, and spray cleaners.
After purchasing a Starter Kit, shoppers can buy refill tablets and powders, which are packaged in industrially compostable packaging. (Plus, the lightweight packages minimize shipping emissions!) Its cleaners are made with safe ingredients and come in classic scents, and shoppers can get a discount when they buy their refills in bulk.
Blueland is also a B Corp and certified cruelty-free by Leaping Bunny. Additionally, the brand works with Black-owned businesses and partners, makes diversity a priority in every hiring decision, and gives all team members paid time off for political and civic engagement. (This is in addition to Blueland’s own policy work to reduce single-use plastics on state and federal levels).
BLK + GRN
Category: Health and beauty
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: BLK + GRN is a marketplace that aims “to normalize access to non-toxic products targeted to Black women” and “to fund Black women entrepreneurs who create non-toxic personal care products.”
BLK + GRN ensures that none of the products listed on its site include harmful ingredients like parabens, petroleum, coal tar, heavy metals, or any of the others on its “Toxic Twenty” list. Plus, the company uplifts Black artisans, who are chosen by Black health experts, and makes it easy to support Black-owned businesses.
Additionally, all products on BLK + GRN’s site go through a rigorous vetting process.
Credo
Category: Health and beauty
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Credo created The Dirty List and The Credo Clean Standard to define products that don’t use ingredients that are linked to cancer, hormone disruption, allergies, environmental harm, and toxins.
Its online site only sells products that align with these standards — so it’s an easy way to cut down on the amount of time you spend researching the products you buy.
Additionally, Credo has created a Pact Program to make it easy for shoppers to drop off their hard-to-recycle beauty product packaging and “recycle your empties” in order to earn reward points and reduce waste.
EarthHero
Category: Sustainable home goods, gifts, kitchen supplies, and more
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: EarthHero’s goal is to make sustainable shopping simple — and it lives up to that mission. Every product on EarthHero’s site goes through its “proprietary 5-Step Sourcing Methodology.”
Additionally, EarthHero is a certified B Corp, a member of 1% for the Planet, and allows you to filter and shop by values like Vegan, Plastic-free, LGBTQ+ Empowering, Made in the USA, Black-owned, and more.
Public Goods
Category: Home goods, health and beauty
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Public Goods sells body, home, and cleaning products in bottles made from 100% recycled, post-consumer plastic, sources biodegradable alternatives to single-use plastics, and sources tree-free materials for all paper products. Additionally, every shipment is carbon offset.
Whether you’re shopping for body soap and shaving cream, or floor cleaner and coffee filters, Public Goods carries eco-friendly options for all shoppers. A membership of $49 a year will get you 20% off all of your purchases, and free shipping on orders $45 or more — or you can just shop the list price.
Public Goods also works with Eden Reforestation to restore healthy forests, planting over 363,000 trees to date. The brand also donates all of its near-expired food products to partnering nonprofits to help people facing food insecurity.
Bookshop.org
Category: Books
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Bookshop is hands-down the best way to ethically buy books online. Its website is easy to use, it makes discovering your next great book simple, and most importantly, every purchase supports an independent bookstore of your choosing.
According to Bookshop, “Amazon sells over 60% of all books in the US and is growing. That shift threatens the future of bookstores and will hurt readers, authors, and publishers who rely on a diverse, healthy ecosystem for books.” Its founders created Bookshop to allow book lovers to shop online and do good at the same time.
Bookshop is also a B Corp and Climate Neutral certified.
→ Looking for more online bookstores that aren’t Amazon? Explore our guide.
Libro.fm
Category: Audiobooks
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Libro.fm is the ethical version of Audible (which is owned by Amazon). Like Audible, Libro.fm has an easy-to-use app, a $15 monthly membership cost, and operates on a “credits” model.
But unlike Audible, every time you download an audiobook, you directly support the independent bookstore of your choosing (instead of a trillion dollar corporation).
Libro.fm also does a great job pointing shoppers to audiobooks from diverse and underrepresented authors. Plus, they’re a Social Purpose Corporation, committed to serving readers and bookstores above all else.
→ Looking for more Audible alternatives for audiobooks? Explore our guide.
Kobo
Category: E-books and e-readers
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Looking for a Kindle alternative? Rakuten Kobo is a much more environmentally friendly option. Plus, you can still shop from a huge library of e-books, or pair your device with your OverDrive account to download books from your local library, just like you might on a Kindle.
Kobo offsets 100% of the carbon emissions associated with shipping their e-readers. Plus, Kobo offers a free mail-in recycling option for when your e-reader has reached the end of its lifespan. The Kobo Clara 2E model is also made with recycled plastic!
→ Check out our full review of Kobo e-readers!
BackMarket
Category: Tech
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: BackMarket is a global marketplace where you can purchase refurbished tech, from smartphones and laptops to gaming consoles and home appliances.
While you can purchase used items on Amazon, BackMarket is a certified B Corp and has a rigorous vetting program to make sure the tech you purchase has been tested and restored to perfect working condition. Plus, the company has diverted an estimated 1.3 million metric tons of carbon emissions since its inception in 2014.
According to BackMarket, a refurbished smartphone uses 91.3% less raw materials, 86.4% less water, generates 89% less e-waste, and puts 91.6% less carbon emissions into our atmosphere compared to brand new. Plus, refurbished tech is an average of 70% cheaper than new products.
Who Gives A Crap
Category: Paper goods
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: With essentials like toilet paper, paper towels, trash bags, tissues, and more, Who Gives A Crap has all of your daily cleaning goods without any ethical dilemmas. Paper products are made with bamboo or recycled paper, and waste bags are made with recycled plastics or compostable materials.
As a B Corp, Who Gives A Crap donates 50% of profits to clean water and sanitation initiatives around the globe. So far, they’ve donated over $9.5 million to help people access vital services.
Plus, Who Gives A Crap uses electric vehicles for delivery, partners with Pachama to ensure its shipping is carbon neutral, and its warehouse is powered by solar panels that, yes, spell “crap.”
Customers can also choose subscription options to save on recurring orders.
Chewy
Category: Pet care
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Carrying over 3,500 pet care brands, Chewy is the go-to marketplace for all of your furry friends’ needs. With easy subscription options, free and fast shipping on orders over $50, and a reputation for incredible customer service, Chewy beats out the competition (ahem, Amazon) any day.
Plus, since 2012, Chewy has donated more than $183 million in products for shelter and rescue animals. They partner with shelters and rescues in all 50 states, help facilitate pet adoptions, and make it easy to donate to shelters.
While Chewy does not appear to have any specific sustainability initiatives, the marketplace features a variety of eco-friendly pet products.
Uncommon Goods
Category: Gifts, home goods
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Uncommon Goods is passionate about discovering creative and unique goods from all over the world while uplifting independent makers and merchants.
The site divides products up to make it easy to shop for eco-friendly products, goods from Black makers, or from women-owned businesses. You can also become a Perks Member and receive free and fast shipping.
Uncommon Goods is a founding B Corp and donates $1 for every purchase you make. Plus, their products have always been leather, feather, and fur-free.
Etsy
Category: Unique gifts, handmade items, and custom products
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Rather than giving your money to big corporations, every Etsy purchase is an opportunity to support an individual creator or entrepreneur. It’s also a perfect place to find the next cool thing that’s not yet available anywhere else.
Etsy uses 100% renewable energy for the power used by its data centers, global offices, and its remote employees — plus, the company offsets carbon emissions on all shipping and packaging.
eBay
Category: Basically everything
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: When you choose to buy a used product (whether it’s tech, clothing, furniture, or whatever else) on eBay, you’re extending the life of that product and ensuring nothing new needs to be manufactured. Selling things you’re no longer using offers the same benefits. (We listed eBay as one of our favorite “online thrift stores.”)
In addition to making it easy to buy second-hand products and extend the life of products you no longer use, eBay also supports two initiatives that give back.
eBay for Charity allows sellers to donate all or part of their proceeds to a charity they care about. It also makes it easy for buyers to shop with sellers aligned with their values.
The eBay Foundation supports nonprofits that “address and remove barriers to entrepreneurship for people who identify with historically excluded groups.” The foundation has granted more than $76 million since 1998.
Good.Store
Category: Coffee, tea, soap, personal goods
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Created by internet philanthropists John and Hank Green, Good.Store sells everyday items with 100% of proceeds going to charity. With soaps, teas, coffee beans, socks, and other accessories, the shop is the perfect place to find gifts or set up monthly subscriptions.
All purchases benefit Partners in Health, a global nonprofit that improves healthcare equity in low-income areas worldwide. As of February 2025, over $9.7 million has been donated by Good.Store purchases.
→ Learn more about Good.Store!
Ten Thousand Villages
Category: Artisan-made gifts and accessories
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Ten Thousand Villages celebrates craft and culture by bringing the work of global makers to the online marketplace.
As a Fair Trade company, it pays all its artisans a living wage in safe work conditions. The company’s name comes from inviting shoppers to join in its work to empower makers in (now, way more than) ten thousand villages.
DoneGood
Category: Gifts, clothing, accessories
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: DoneGood is an ethical marketplace with over 120 ethical brands, doing the work to make sure every purchase you make does good for people and the planet.
The brand (a creation of its parent company Karma Wallet) is B Corp certified and a member of 1% For The Planet. All brands that appear on the marketplace are pre-vetted for sustainable values and ethical business practices.
Shoppers can sort products by category or by value, making it easy to support small businesses that empower workers, are women-owned, cruelty-free, and more.
NOVICA
Category: Artisan-made gifts and home goods
Why It’s Better Than Amazon: Describing itself as “the world’s largest impact marketplace,” NOVICA sells products handmade by talented artisans from around the world.
NOVICA is a certified B Corp, is a proud part of the Fair Trade movement, allows you to support a cause as you shop, and supports the work of global artisans. Every purchase helps artisans support families, uplift communities, and overcome adversity.