Do we realize that our purchases shape the world?

When a dollar leaves our hands, it goes to work, work that can support life and wellbeing or degradation and destruction! Even though we do not bring about a greener world just by the way we spend our money, we still can create big change with our purchases.

What we buy and the companies we buy from does matter. By making green choices instead of conventional ones, we are choosing what contributes to our Earth’s wellbeing—organic and sustainable farming, healthy ingredients, worker stewardship, and more—over what destroys—chemically intensive agribusiness, toxic ingredients and climate warming processes, sweatshops, and child labor.

What if people (us) only shopped from businesses that went the extra mile because of care for customers, workers, communities, and the Earth?

Take one example, fair trade items, which 20 years ago were difficult to find but today are in our grocery stores (there will even be a fair trade festival on December 5 and 6 in downtown Norfolk at O’Connor’s Brewery). Keep in mind that buying green and living green is about embracing simplicity: reduce first, then shop for green services and products and find innovative ways to reuse whatever you can. Purchasing products and food from green companies is voting with your dollars for the kind of economy—and world—we want to support!

A HAPPY, GREEN THANKSGIVING TO ALL.