Our consumer system has evolved into a vast network of shipping and receiving products over long distances. A company’s “success” relies on its ability to gain national and/or international distribution of its products. On one level, it’s good news for a consumer to be able to purchase on one side of the country a “natural” item manufactured on the other side of the country or from another country even. But for a product to travel 1500 miles and then be placed on a shelf in a retail store, it must have a decent “shelf-life”, which, with consumables, usually requires some form of preservative. Preservatives tend to have undesirable effects like environmental pollution or are unhealthy for the body. And most obviously, as we try to save our atmosphere from the pollution of carbon-based fuel burning, shipping via truck and airplane present a serious concern. Consider, for example, the average 1500 miles that vegetable and fruit travels to reach your table.
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Since “Big business” requires widespread consumption, it has a stake in keeping this shipping and receiving system alive, leading to recent attempts to discredit the “local product” movement. They cite examples of how buying local will make the poor people in other countries poorer. In reality, sourcing out labor to other countries with more lenient labor laws allows companies to overwork and underpay people to manufacture their products. In the case of China: sometimes crippling working conditions, low minimum wages, extremely long work weeks, and people having to move far from their families in order to financially support them. For more info about working conditions in China, see Bill McKibben’s “The Great Leap: Scenes from China’s industrial revolution”
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No need to to feel guilty. “Local” versus “Non-local” should not be thought of as an either/or decision. Sugar, tropical fruits, coffee, and tea have been absorbed into our culture – and most of us don’t live within a few hundred miles of where any of these are grown. Critics of the “local” and “organic” movements make a good point when they speak of class economics. You can’t fault someone for buying a cheap can of food when they’re lucky to be able to purchase any food at all. We live in a country with 400 billionaires and yet many thousands wonder where their next meal is coming from.
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Those of us who have the ability to choose among a vast array of products in our consumer culture must learn to shop with more awareness, however. It doesn’t mean we need never to eat a banana shipped from Mexico again. But in the height of the summer in the Northwest, when you can take a walk down a city street and pick cherries, blackberries, and blueberries, we can ask ourselves how hungry we are for bananas. When given the choice between two products of equal quality, and one of them comes from your own town, a conscious choice might be the local one. Local companies have more accountability to the communities they serve, since the owners and workers must tip their hats to those with whom they live side by side.
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Rainbow Remedies now has shelf tags identifying the many local companies with which we do business. I’ve expanded “local” to mean any product created in Washington or Oregon, which I know for many people seems more “regional”, but we have so many good natural products from our neighboring state. Look for this sign, next time you’re in the store:
Rainbow Natural Remedies
*Local Product*