Buying local can have global benefits - Denis the Dustcart Blog
Published: 8 December 2021
In his regular feature, Denis the Dustcart talks about buying local and how it can have global benefits. It supports greater sustainability – environmentally and economically.
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Exeter is brimming with independent shops, from Paris Street to Gandy Street to the city’s independent hive: Fore Street.
And it’s never been more important to support them.
Supporting local means supporting the local economy. It means the local community benefitting directly from money spent locally and then spending that money locally.
In other words, money spent with local, independent businesses stays to a greater extent within local communities – which is just what the world needs.
The planet is finite. It cannot support constant economic growth. We need to revert to more locally-focussed economies.
When we support local businesses, we encourage a robust local economic infrastructure.
Strong local economies will see us relying less on global consumerist structures, and this will only have a positive impact on all our lives: not only because it’s more environmentally and ecologically sustainable to shop local – less waste, smaller-scale agriculture, fewer transport miles, fewer emissions – but because we won’t be contributing to the ceaseless rush to the top that keeps us all so hectic.
Shopping locally will, eventually, allow us all to just…slow…down.
It also helps create a system of interdependence among independently-owned businesses. Shops on Exeter’s Fore Street, for example, supported each other during lockdown, combining deliveries and offering their expertise to one another, helping to sustain each other and keep each other afloat.
When local businesses become a community serving the wider community, everyone benefits.
So take a walk around Exeter’s independents. Every gift you buy from them is also a gift to them and to your community.
