Year of Buying Locally

OWN YOUR OWN Ethic Spreads as Locals Challenge Themselves to Buy Local Goods

The trend started by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon’s 100-mile diet continues as Buy Local awareness rises. Two new projects have recently launched where consumers are challenging themselves to source products locally.

It started in 2005 with the Tyee series chronicling efforts to eat local food for one year. It caused a sensation, spawned a book, and a movement to eat local food was born. Food is hard to give up, but it’s a simple supply chain. It’s either grown, hatched, caught or harvested within that 100 miles or it’s not. Another Tyee series looked at the more complex supply chains of local clothing. Now two new projects take on the challenge of buying locally.

New Westminster’s Sheila Keenan is three months into a year-long project to get her groceries, clothing, restaurant meals, gifts and more all within City limits. She’s thwarting car travel and big box stores in an effort to support the local economy and examine her own consumer behavior. Along the way she is discovering some of the many benefits of buying locally. She’s spending less money by making more conscious choices and discovering new and old businesses that make New Westminster unique. She hasn’t found much that she can’t buy locally, but she’s making a list of businesses she’d like to see move in. Read about her project here, and check out here blog here. We’re glad to see that Sheila is committing to shop at more independent businesses in February, because shopping at her local Wal-mart, McDonald’s and Starbucks isn’t Buying Local, it’s just shopping at Big-Box or multi-national chains close to home. If spending is to benefit the local economy, local ownership (that supports the multiplier effect) is key.

Darren Barefoot is a Vancouver writer committed to a year of living Canadian. He’s focusing on a different area of consumption each month this year, and sourcing only Canadian-made goods and services, except where they don’t exist. See the photo below from his website for more information.

Darren’s criteria are strict – he’s ideally looking for products entirely sourced and produced in Canada. He’s lucky he lives in Vancouver for our riches of local food, our healthy greenhouse sector, and the opportunities for good local travel. I can imagine he’ll be doing some canning this fall, as all of us who want to eat local food must do to stock up for winter.

As he continues on his journey, he’s creating a great resource of Canadian-made products based on his research that all consumers interested in OWN YOUR OWN should check out.

Know of other projects that challenge consumers or businesses to OWN YOUR OWN? Let us know. We’re especially interested in businesses that are localizing their supply chains.