With Earth Day fast approaching, you’ll hear a lot of talk about recycling being good for our environment and sustainability. Shopping local is a form of recycling our hard earned dollars to benefit the local economic environment.
Studies of the “local multiplier effect” or “local premium” shows that for every dollar spent at a locally-owned business, a great percentage remains in the community. There have been a number of studies conducted but about $.45 on the dollar remains in the community when you patronize a local business, compared to $.15 when you patronize a box store located in your town, and $0.00 when shopping on the Internet (assuming the online merchant is not in your town).
Recycle Your Money
In addition to shopping local placing money in your neighbor’s hands, this money gets recycled into the greater community at a higher percentage. For instance, if you bought $100 worth of cake at your local bakery and $100 worth of new clothes at a box store (you’ll need them after all that cake), your baker will be recycling $45 back into your community. Your box store will give $15.
If we can increase our shop local spending and commitment, the money piped into our local economies will grow at a much faster rate. Take a look here. This recycling creates more jobs, directly and indirectly, to deal with the increase in need for services.
Recycling bottles, plastics, papers and metals is helpful to our environment, but so is recycling money through local merchants. Your dollars have a much larger compounding effect on the local economy when you support local merchants.
Playing up the importance of “recycling” our dollars is a unique spin on shop local and one that’s very timely with Earth Day coming up soon. Make sure you community understands that metal, plastics and glass aren’t the only things you’re happy to recycle. You take paper too, particularly the green kind.
Image credit via cegoh at Pixabay
