While you are on a supply run for groceries, stationery or toys, all you are likely to see is plastic-laden mass manufactured products on shelves, sitting with brightly coloured labels ready to attract consumers. With climate change on the rise, landfills overflowing across the world and prices of fuel breaking new records every day, we are expanding our horizons as each sun sets.
Bottles of Coca-Cola have probably seen the deepest parts of Human Intervention, with bright red shutters and boards found in every hill station or narrow village lane. Should we consider this as a victory for mankind? That industrialization and exports have reached a point where products can reach grassroot levels across the world, or should we look at the harsh reality that people have littered with that same bottle, water systems that were once the lifeline of the community and now sit like untouched sewers, gathering garbage every day.
To be more sensitive about these detrimental lifecycles, we have to promote shopping locally. Which does not only include largely groceries, but also accessories, lifestyle products and stationery. Although in some cases this alternative might prove to be more expensive, but in the long run it will promote a number factors that might just save our planet from spiraling into disaster.
- Turning to buying Fresher groceries at your local bhajiwala than relying on supermarkets where you might find fresher produce that is not covered in mounds of unnecessary plastic.
- Whether you promote being local in any field, you in turn promote creating jobs in the neighborhood and the local economy prospers emotionally and socially.
- If we promote a higher local GDP, our taxes flow locally and can be then used for improving public infrastructure and quality of life.
- The export market requires endless resources to transport goods, which burns more and more fossil fuels which increase greenhouse gas emissions. By keeping the supply chain shorter locally, you can save the environment.
- You are more aware of how your product has been produced, information about its resources and manufacturing are usually spoken about. Small businesses today are extremely mindful about their waste impacts and workforce laws and do their best to keep everything in check.
- You connect with makers and like-minded people, their stories and conversations, forming a more human connection when you buy product. For example, when you buy a journal from Ekatra, you become the bread and butter for a team of homemakers who wanted to stand up for themselves.
- It keeps the community unique and dynamic; less stress is taken to mass produce goods and resources like water, electricity and fossil fuels can be used in a more efficient way.
It is understood that change will not occur overnight, in some situations buying local might not be the most favorable and in turn be more expensive, because of the hand-labour as compared to cheap machine production done elsewhere, but as long as we are open to change and start small, we can start a healthy cycle of promoting local to do our part in the community.