Why buying local matters even more
Where did you go the last time you bought a book? Online, or down the street to a nearby bookstore?
How about that camera or other electronic gadget, or the bouquet you sent for Valentine's Day? Did you pick them out in person or from a picture on your screen?
Deciding where to buy is one of those instantaneous choices we make every day, based on perceptions of what's cheaper/faster/better/more convenient. Those measurements are pretty important to all of us at a time when we're working more and making less, with fewer dollars to spend and less time to spend them.
Still, we need to add one more criterion to the list: Do our purchases help our communities?
In these tough times, that question is more important than ever.
It's a way of thinking led over the past few years by "localvores" who strive to eat primarily food produced close to home. Motives range from better-tasting food to reduced pollution to support for local farmers, but the overriding message is this: What and where we buy has implications beyond price and convenience.
It's easy to expand that concept well beyond food purchases.
Local stores we patronize might keep our neighbors employed. Purchases we make might protect a scenic downtown streetscape. For every $100 spent at a locally owned store, $45 is returned to the area's economy, according to a 2003 report by Civic Economics, a consulting and research firm.
No sales tax might sound like a great incentive to buy online, if it wasn't for the shipping and handling costs. But don't forget that sales tax dollars generated by local purchases (and by online purchases from Illinois companies) help fund basic services like police and fire protection.
Buying local doesn't mean we have to give up our online habit, as staff writer Anna Marie Kukec pointed out Sunday in her profile of suburban booksellers. Stores like Naperville's Anderson's Bookshop will fill an order online, as well as enrich us by bringing celebrated authors from J.K. Rowling to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to town for book signings and speaking engagements.
The better-buying habit doesn't just extend to one-of-a-kind local shops.
Plenty of nationwide businesses have suburban roots and contribute jobs, property taxes and sales taxes to our suburbs, turning a global purchase into a local purchase.
It's easy to help our communities weather the economic storm, just by taking a little time to consider the origins of the products we buy or to weigh the pros and cons of the retailers we frequent. That investment will really pay off in the long run.