You can sign petitions and call your Congressman until you’re blue in the face, but until you put your money where your mouth is, it’s unlikely to get you anywhere. If you care about is the health of your community, the quality of the food you eat, and the environmental impact of your shopping choices, you’ve got to vote with your dollar.
It used to be fairly easy to know where your money would have the most impact: when it comes to food, shopping at a farmers’ market keeps money in the local economy and cuts down on carbon emissions, while shopping at Mega Grocery Mart does the opposite.
But now we’ve got lots of options: Shop Local! Buy Organic! Shop Fair Trade! Don’t Shop At All!
It can be hard to know exactly which option is right for you and the world economy you want to support. So the folks over at Ethical Ocean whipped up this handy infographic to help clarify the differences between two of the most heavily advocated options, local and fair trade.
Check it out, and then drop us a comment telling us what factors are most important to you when you shop!
(Click to view larger)
via Ethical Ocean – eco friendly products, fair trade and vegan shopping.
I don’t quite understand why this is a versus situation – there is little or no direct competition between buying local or fairtrade because fairtrade products like bananas, coffee, chocolate, spices, etc are not grown locally for most of us. I buy both local and fairtrade whenever I can.
What would be a more interesting blog post would be how the definition of “Local” is being shifted from actually being local to being provincial – and local even encompasses neighbouring provinces now!