Conscious Consumerism
Conscious consumerism alone has a major impact on the local economy, your personal health, budget constraints and the environment. It involves looking at the power of each dollar spent and evaluating how it can make a difference while benefiting your family.
Sign into your favorite social networking sites and join local buy and sell, advertise, entrepreneur and local event groups. Doing so will expose you to small and home-based entrepreneurs producing wonderful products at great prices. You may find artists who carve beautiful house address signs out of scraps they obtained from a woodwork shop operating just a few blocks from you, who purchased their materials from a local mill. Each of these small businesses hires local people and buys coffee for their staff room and gas from local stations. With this in mind, it is easy to see that buying local is one conscious consumer activity that supports a sustainable community.
You may find great prices on items like buckets of honey produced by local beekeepers, and as we all know - bees are vital to food production as well as a healthy environment overall. Local wine producers support local fruit producers. In fact there are small home-brew businesses where you can take in the fruits harvested from your property and have them produce the wine for you at around $6 per bottle. The bottles and buckets (from these examples above) are both reusable and recyclable.
Dropping into events featuring local entrepreneurs from farmers, artists and crafters to authors and gardeners is a great way to discover what is going on locally. These events will also bring in food trucks and caterers, and many booths will offer samples of the cheese, juice, breads, candies and other items that are produced locally.
Farmers markets typically happen once per week, which is a great way to get nutritionally rich, fresh produce - but also to find amazing products made by talented people in the area. Holiday and craft markets will occur a month or more prior to each holiday. Garden markets are often larger affairs that occur in the spring with businesses displaying their works for anything yard related from decorations to plants to supplies and services. Festivals also offer a great opportunity to get exposed to many interesting products available in our community. Drop into the small stands and stores that farmers operate on their own land, to get great deals on things that are in peak harvest or toward the end of the season. For instance you can get amazing savings on winter squash, beets and potatoes around mid-October.
Some of the larger events will charge an entry fee, usually less than $10 often only $2, and this fee goes to help with the costs of putting on the event. Paying the fee is a great way to ensure events like these continue, and is a positive way to support local small business owners. Attending these events can lead to networking opportunities too, and therefore the fee might be a business write-off for you. These businesses might also offer you discounts and collaborate on future activities. For instance, if you plan on hosting an event - perhaps one of those food trucks would be willing to serve your guests, you might hire some local musicians that you met recently to provide the music, and provide gift bags filled with locally made goodies for those who attended your event. Perhaps some of the business owners would like to contribute gift certificates or something for those gift bags.
Get the kids involved when you go to these events by giving each person a certain budget to work with. When you get home, go through what was purchased and get everyone to decide who got the best value for the money spent. Have them enter a variety of prize draws and contests while browsing the various booths. This family activity is a fantastic teaching tool, helping them understand budgeting, math and the value of money. Have a discussion on which booth had the best displays, which samples were the most delicious, and perhaps what other booths could have done to improve their appearance or attract more people to their booth. Discussions like these help develop an entrepreneurial spirit. It also instills in them a sense of responsibility to support local, while bonding with them during these family activities.
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