BC Buy Local Week Highlights The Urgency Of Supporting Local Businesses Amid Extreme Weather Events
BRITISH COLUMBIA – The 10th annual BC Buy Local Week kicked off Monday to encourage consumers to do their holiday spending at locally owned businesses to avoid transportation greenhouse gas impacts, shipping delays, and supply chain bottlenecks. The current state of emergency means it’s more important than ever to support local businesses, local farmers, and local manufacturers.
BC Buy Local Week 2021 runs from November 29th to December 5th and is a partnership of leading BC municipalities, business groups and businesses across the province.
“Local products and local businesses reduce emissions and increase the economic benefit associated with common purchases,” says Amy Robinson, founder and Executive Director of LOCO BC, which coordinates BC Buy Local Week. “By shifting holiday spending towards locally owned businesses, locally grown and locally made products, consumers can make more conscious choices, and help keep up to 92% of the cost of the product in BC. That recirculation keeps our neighbours working and helps the BC economy recover more quickly.”
BC Buy Local Week encourages shoppers to shift their spending towards local businesses and local products when making holiday purchases, including gift cards to use later, and local experiences that don’t need to be transported at all. Local businesses have more localized supply chains, so it’s more likely that they’ll have products on the shelf since they don’t need to be shipped great distances.
With climate change on everyone’s mind after the latest extreme weather event, the results of a new report from LOCO BC and Vancity uncovers the carbon and economic impacts of common purchases. The research found that:
Locally products reduce greenhouse gasses from 5 per cent to 66 per cent compared to imported products.
Local products produce an economic benefit between 1.8 and 7.1 times that of imported products. When an imported product is purchased at a purely online retailer, the benefit jumps to 123 times.
Local businesses recirculate 4.1 times the revenue on average in the BC economy more than multinationals. When a local business is compared to a non-local purely online retailer, the benefit jumps to 107 times.
“With BC’s recent extreme weather events, it’s more important than ever to shop close to home, keeping the positive impacts of jobs, purchasing, charitable giving, and taxes to fund municipal services in your local community,” adds Robinson. “By making just 10% of our annual purchases with local businesses, it would help create more than 14,000 jobs and retain $4.3 billion in the local economy every year.”
Supporting local also helps keep our communities unique and vibrant. “Local businesses contribute greatly to a sense of place and community,” says Nolan Marshall III, CEO of the Downtown Vancouver BIA. “Money spent at local businesses stays local and strengthens the economy. The holiday shopping season is an excellent opportunity to shop and dine locally and discover what Vancouver entrepreneurs have to offer.”
“Our local businesses have felt the financial crunch of the pandemic,” says Bill Cunningham, VP of Community Business and Real Estate at Vancity. “We must remember their determination and resilience to remain open and support our communities as we shop this holiday season by thinking, shopping, and clicking local.”
As part of the BC Buy Local Week campaign, participating local businesses will be promoting their locally owned businesses, locally grown and locally made products with bright pink stickers online and in-store to make it easy for consumers to identify them. They will use the hashtags #BCBuyLocal #BCBuyLocalWeek and #7ways7days on social media.
Consumers are encouraged to share photos of their reasons for supporting local on social media and look to bcbuylocal.com as a resource for BC products, businesses, and holiday shopping events.
