Money spent locally can bounce back to you in many subtle ways, but money spent out of town is just plain gone—likely never to return.
Every dollar spent locally is an investment in your community.
Local Logic's 3 Ideals
for building a thriving, vibrant community
IDEAL #1
Shop locally whenever possible and foster sustainable economic development
Concepts
A thriving community understands that money is the oil that keeps the local economic engine running smoothly.
An engine hemorrhaging oil will eventually seize—and shopping out-of-town (and online) is the fastest way to leak the oil out of our economic engine.
A lack of money results in a stalled economy (recession) where able-bodied, hard-working people find themselves shrugging their shoulders at desperate merchants.
Money spent locally can bounce back to you in many subtle ways, but money spent out of town is just plain gone—likely never to return.
If everyone keeps the money bouncing around our local economy, chances are you’ll find it bouncing back your way a lot more often!
If it costs a few more dollars to buy from locally-owned businesses than ordering from out-of-town businesses with higher volume leverage, consider it an investment in the place you call home.
Investments pay dividends—you’ll be glad to live in a community with a thriving, diverse local economy. You just might experience price gap shrinkage as the community collectively weighs in on its own economy of scale.
Decision-making based on short-term gain is the reason for many of the problems we see in our current environmental, social, and economic scenarios.
Forward-thinking sustainable development will provide revenue streams to all of us for many decades to come.
Short-sighted action results in short-term gains—leaving our children wondering what went wrong.
IDEAL #2
Support and practice local organic agriculture for a safe, secure food supply
Powell River has one of the longest growing seasons in Canada, yet we are completely dependent on outside sources of food.
Take a guess at how much money a community of 16,000 spends weekly on imported vegetables and meat. Now imagine that amount of money spent on our own local agricultural economy!
Concepts
Our grocery stores need to bring in truckloads of produce and meat continually in order to keep up with demand.
The Powell River region is at the mercy of forces outside our control to ensure that our fridges are stocked—and at a reasonable price.
Why should we continue to send money out-of-town to buy food we can easily grow here in abundance? Let's invest in ourselves by building-up our local agricultural economy!
Why waste time and money maintaing an under-utilized grassy backyard? You’ll love the reward of plentiful platefuls of fresh, home-grown goodness.
The Romans relied on “state-of-the-art” lead piping. Our modern agriculture industry relies heavily on herbicides and pesticides. This National Post article is one of many that raises serious concerns about the current system's ability to ensure the chemicals used on food today are safe.
Eating toxic chemicals absorbed into fruits and vegetables (no matter how small the concentration) is bad for your health. Spraying toxic chemicals is bad for the planet.
Let's start acknowledging that we contribute to an obvious problem when we choose to eat conventionally-grown food.
Collectively we can all drastically reduce the barrels of pesticides and herbicides unleashed on ourselves and the planet.
Action Plan
Demand BC produce at the grocery stores!
In Powell River’s competitive grocery market, grocers pay close attention to consumer preference.
Share ideas, knowledge, resources & creativity for community enrichment
A thriving, vital community is filled with free expression, inspiration, and conversation at every turn.
Concepts
You know the analogy: A stick may be strong, but a bundle of sticks is much stronger. Knowledge works the same way.
Sharing your ideas and knowledge with the community makes us all stronger and wiser. We all have little bits (or huge volumes) of knowledge that can enrich the community as a whole if we share it by teaching, writing, and speaking at every opportunity.
Powell River is a hot-bed of creativity and inspiration. Art, music, writing, textiles, photography, scrap-booking, dance—whatever floats your boat also keeps us awash in a dynamic, fun environment that is as valuable to tourists as it is to our own cultural pride.
Let's colour the town with lively activity and creativity!
Our educational, medical, food production, legal, economic and political systems (to name a few) are all dysfunctional to various degrees.
There are always better ways to do things—but we won’t discover and develop them if ideas aren’t put on the table. Never underesti
Action Plan
Forget the weather—talk about issues important to you with family and friends
Try engaging in meaningful discussion with strangers at a coffee shop
Contribute writings to local print and online publications.
Inquire about starting a column, or just send in the occasional letter to the editor about issues important to you.
Don’t wait for someone else to take the lead.
If you see a better way of doing something—DO IT! Lead by example and you can change your corner of the world for the better.
Start a blog!
It's fun and easy to start up a blog on WordPress—or just make regular posts on the Community Post (an online community magazine coming soon).