Green Options

It’s time to join tens of millions of Americans who are rediscovering commerce in a local ECOnomy where customers are not treated like “consumers,” but rather as friends, fellow citizens, or neighbors.

While visiting a good friend in Baltimore, Maryland, my family and I wandered the narrow streets of Fell’s Point, the eclectic and artistic enclave and community that offers a more laid back vibe than the festive and equally bustling Baltimore Inner Harbor, peppered with national franchised restaurants and retail chain stores. As travelers, we recognized how the “buy local” movement echoes the growing ecotravel movement, allowing us to experience an authentic sense of place, supporting the restoration and redevelopment of neighborhoods and preserve one-of-a-kind businesses that create one-of-a-kind communities.

We ended up spending most of our day in Fell’s Point where the somewhat Bohemian community seemed to soak up its reputation not just for its retail district and overall attractiveness to hang out or go jogging, biking, or strolling. It’s one of the places where buying local thrives as Buy Local Baltimore, a project of the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Association. Buy Local Baltimore is an educational and marketing campaign designed to encourage area residents to patronize local independent businesses in an effort to improve the quality of life in Baltimore neighborhoods and enhance the economic vitality of the greater Baltimore region. Baltimore’s take on building a more vibrant local economy with small business entrepreneurship reflects the larger movement afoot nationally which often emerges from such organizations as the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).

We ducked into artisanal shops, learned about the history of the area at the Fell’s Point Maritime Museum and sipped a cafe mocha at the Daily Grind, featuring coffee roasted right in town and served up with a smile and a discount for bringing in my own mug. For dinner we savored locally harvested steamed mussels at Bertha’s — even my young son enjoyed one.

We picked up a card from the Buy Local Baltimore which nicely summarizes some of the many reasons why we could do a little more commerce in our communities (instead of shopping at big box stores where most of the money, especially those profits, leaves our community):

1. Keeping money in the neighborhood.

On average, for every $100 spent at a locally owned business, $45 stays in the community according to Buy Local Baltimore. For a chain store, less than $14 stays in the community.

Westport, Connecticut, recently joined a small but growing number of communities to ban the use of free plastic shopping bags within its borders. The new ordinance, which goes into effect early next year, would impose a $150 fine on any store that offers such bags.

WestportNow.com reports that citizens attending the Representative Town Meeting (RTM) vote on the ban overwhelmingly supported the measure. The RTM eventually voted 26 to 5 (with one abstention) in favor of the ordinance, and also rejected a proposal that would have made the ban effective only through Sept. 19 of next year.

Why have gas prices risen to nearly $4 a gallon (or more) in the U.S.? Is it oil speculation? Rising demand? Or the first signs of peak oil?

Whatever the cause (and there’s good reason to blame all three to some degree), most so-called experts these days aren’t expecting oil prices to drop anytime soon. In fact, Newsweek this week features a sobering article titled, “The Coming Energy Wars,” that predicts we’ll soon see oil prices top $200 a barrel. When that happens, the authors warn, we can expect everything about our daily lives to change.

Baltimore’s Parks & People Foundation is offering a special kind of tree sale this spring aimed at boosting the region’s tree cover quickly.

The foundation teamed up with RPM Ecosystems, a wholesale native plant nursery in Dryden, New York, to sell year-old trees grown with a root production method (RPM) that helps them grow three times faster than normal … meaning they can sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere three times faster than conventional young trees.

Normally, we live for the present. We’re not about events, deals, and projects that will hopefully start sometime in the future. We’re not big fans of Chevrolet announcing that in three years they plan to unveil the electric powered car the Volt. That’s great; in three years one of us may plan to get married or buy Microsoft. Maybe we should announce that now. That being said, the neighboring Bay Area [...]