Shop locally whenever possible and foster sustainable economic development
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.
Concepts:
Money—our economic "oil"
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.
Keep the oil in the engine!
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!
Don’t sell-out your town!
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.
Think ahead!
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.
Thinking local is great, but acting local is what counts!
Make an effort to discover the diverse array of locally-provided goods and services.
Make local independent small business your first stops in your shopping routine.
Ask a merchant to special-order items not currently stocked
You’ll eliminate the risk having personal info hacked off online merchant sites.
Start small—choose to source a few staples locally at first (ie. soap & bread)
You’ll appreciate the added value of hand-made quality.
Switch your banking a Credit Union
There are many reasons to join a credit union as this article and this CTV news article explain.
Encourage family and friends to support their local economy.
Weigh-in your opinions and votes in favour of sustainable economic development.
Don’t assume decision-makers are thinking sustainably
Check local and regional government agendas and voice concerns.
Discover local businesses!
Explore the Local Logic Directory and discover businesses you never knew existed.
Keep your out-of-town excursions recreational!
Go explore and have fun—but don’t distort a recreational trip into a busy errand.
Support and practice local organic agriculture for an abundant, clean 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:
Localizing makes sense
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!
Make your land work for you!
Why waste time and money maintaing an under-utilized grassy backyard? You likely have friends and family that would love to help you transform it into a lush garden for mutual benefit—or maybe you’d rather have a solitary project to get you out of the house and grounded.
You’ll love the reward of plentiful platefuls of fresh, home-grown goodness.
The key word is organic!
The Romans relied on “state-of-the-art” lead piping. Our modern agriculture industry relies heavily on herbicides and pesticides. A recent article published in the National Post raises serious concerns about the current system’s ability to ensure the chemicals used on food today are safe.
Let’s stay healthy as a community—let’s invest in our own organic agricultural economy!
Healthy people, healthy planet
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.
Start or expand a backyard garden (or front-yard garden!)
Co-ordinate with neighbours to specialize in different types of produce and make trades.
Encourage family and friends to team up on prime garden space that you may not have time to manage.
Find out about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA’s) and farm gate sales in Powell River.
Make a stop at the Open Air Market a part of your regular summer weekend routine
(April—September: Sat 10:30—noon, Sun 12:30–2:30pm).
Check out locally-owned business Sunshine Organics
They’ll deliver fresh organic produce right to your door.
Switch to all–organic produce
You can find it in your budget to source some (if not most) of your food organically.
Demand BC produce at the grocery stores!
In Powell River’s competitive grocery market, grocers pay close attention to consumer preference.
Check out Ecossentials
An all-organic retail store stocked full of organic produce, bulk organic foods, eco-friendly cleaners, clothes, toys, and much more!
Share ideas, knowledge, and creativity for the enrichment of the community.
A thriving, vital community is filled with free expression, inspiration, and conversation at every turn.
Concepts:
Sharing ideas & knowledge makes us all stronger
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.
Your ideas and creativity are valuable
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!
Your ideas can change your community—and the world
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 underestimate the power you hold to make a lasting change by expressing your ideas.
Forget the weather—talk about issues important to you with family and friends
Try engaging in meaningful discussion with strangers at a coffee shop
Send “letters to the editor” of your local and regional media outlets.
Contribute writings to local print and online publications.
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.
Don’t keep your creativity bottled-up!
Your community yearns to be inspired by your art/writings/music.
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).