Think Globally, Buy Locally

One of the easiest ways to help your community requires very little effort at all:  Support your local businesses.  When choosing between goliath chains such as Walmart or Target and your local mom and pop store, go with the latter.  I say this not because I have anything against Walmart or Target.  The New Rules Project (www.newrules.org), an organization devoted to community focus, outlines ten benefits of supporting local business.

1. Local character and prosperity:  In an increasingly homogenized world, communities that preserve their one-of-a-kind businesses and distinctive character have an economic advantage.

2. Community well-being:  Locally owned businesses build strong communities by sustaining vibrant town centers, linking neighbors in a web of economic and social relationships, and contributing to local causes.

3.  Local decision-making:  Local ownership ensures that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.

4.  Keeping dollars in the local economy:  Compared to chain stores, locally owned businesses recycle a much larger share of their revenue back into the local economy, enriching the whole community.

5.  Job and wages:  Locally owned businesses create more jobs locally and, in some sectors, provide better wages and benefits than chains do.

6.  Entrepreneurship:  Entrepreneurship fuels America's economic innovation and prosperity, and serves as a key means for families to move out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class.

7.  Public benefits and costs:  Local stores in town centers require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls.

8.  Environmental sustainability:  Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centers, which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.

9.  Competition:  A marketplace of tens of thousands of small businesses is the best way to ensure innovation and low prices over the long-term.

10.  Product diversity:  A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers, guarantees a much broader range of product choices.

The bottom line is, when you buy locally, you are directly supporting your neighborhood.  Local businesses can sometimes be a bit more expensive than chains such as Walmart and Target, which get discounts for buying bulk, but if you can expand your thought process beyond the initial price, you'll quickly realize that the benefits (many of which are economic) of buying locally far outweigh the small price difference that sometimes comes with shopping locally.