Mama Jo’s vs. Mega-Mart
Does saving gas mean shopping at big-box stores?
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Mama Jo’s vs. Mega-Mart
Make-it-Green Girl here, with another episode of Make-it-Green Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for an Earth Friendly Life. Now that gas is rather pricey, and making headlines left and right, it seems appropriate to add a global perspective to our repertoire of driving tips. Today, I’m going to delve into the wide world of buying locally to save both our communities and the global community.
The Mega-Mart Debate
In an earlier episode, I suggested the strategy of fewer trips to save on your gasoline consumption. Grammar Girl raised the point that this suggests we need to shop at the big outlet stores where we can get everything we need in one stop. Grammar Girl is correct (as she usually is), that making one stop at Mega-Mart saves more gas than running all over town on a Saturday to the meat store, the bakery, the green grocer, etc. etc. etc. But there’s a bigger picture to consider.
While I recognize that in many communities, the Mega-Mart is the only available option, many of us are privileged to live in communities blossoming with local artists, craftspeople, and businesses. I’m going to make the assertion that it is in fact better for the environment for you to be running all over town trying to find-locally owned businesses than to stop at one huge mega shopping center and get everything you ever wanted to buy (and some things you didn’t).
The True Cost of Gasoline
Here in America, we are just beginning to get a taste of what gasoline really costs. Europeans have been paying a premium for this luxury for some time, while we in America have enjoyed oodles of gas under two dollars a gallon. Our entire societal infrastructure has been built on cheap gasoline, too. It used to be cheaper to ship raw materials all the way to China, pay Chinese laborers to manufacture our consumer goods, and ship the finished product all the way back to America. This is because American labor is expensive, and fuel was cheap.
In this way, many businesses grew up around this economy of scale for the last 50 years, creating huge warehouses in the central United States to serve as “centralized distribution centers” for the gobs of products they buy and ship all across the country. Now that we are starting to experience the true cost of gasoline, everything is becoming more expensive because the impact of shipping it so far on four dollars a gallon is much more costly than shipping it on two dollars a gallon.
Consumer products sold at large centralized shopping centers are often extremely affordable, because the company has externalized the cost of producing these goods. This means someone else pays the price, and it’s more than just an economy of scale that makes that price cheap. The consequences and costs of fuel use are externalized to the environment, and the cost of labor and manufacturing pollutants are externalized to another country. Even though the product might be cheaper, it costs the environment far more.
Where Your Dollar Goes
Also, a large percentage of your dollar–sometimes as much as eighty percent–went not to the grower, the picker, the carver, or the laborer, but to the middle men who collected, transported, advertised, and sold you the product. An economist will tell you that buying locally is not good for you or the economy, because by not buying the lowest priced item you’re not encouraging competition, which drives prices down and quality up. In truth, though, I’ve seen the opposite; cheap, disposable goods that do not last and do not satisfy.
For many reasons, personal and economic, we all need to try to be more aware of what we buy, where it came from, and how it was made. Of course, you don’t get much help from über-stores who line their shelves with oodles of goods that could have been made anywhere (but were probably made in China). But a lot of goods do come with an origin label (my jeans, for example, were made in Mexico), so do your homework. If you’re at a locally owned business, though, the person you speak to in the shop will likely be the person who can tell you where it came from, why they decided to sell it, and what they plan on doing with your money once they get it. All you have to do is ask.
As much as traditional Keynesian economists worship it, price is not the only motivating factor for buying goods and services anymore. I’m much more willing to give my hard-earned money to a local café whose owner and employees live and work in my neighborhood, than pay half as much (or sometimes twice as much) to a franchise or huge corporation that uses my money to benefit their shareholders who live in other states. Money circulating in my community translates to more goods, services, events, and establishments that enrich my life because those businesses pay taxes, purchase permits, and pay fees that enrich my community, not an-already-rich-CEO.
The Net Effect
Patronizing all these local businesses might seem like an increase in driving at first glance, but the more people supporting this model and turning away from huge centralized shopping centers, the more we will start seeing a net reduction in gas consumption. Communities will be planned on sustainable business models, with mixed use development on a pedestrian scale. This will in turn change our existence from disconnected commuter-based mega-shopping-center into an integrated, supportive network of human beings.
Until the glorious day that all of you live in a town where you can walk and bike everywhere, remember the ideas I mentioned in the first of this series, Pinch at the Pump. Consolidate trips when you can; try walking or biking there instead; and if you don’t really need it, learn to live without driving there.
Thanks for sticking around for another installment of Green Driving. You can find a transcript of this show on the web at www.quickanddirtytips.com. If you already love Quick and Dirty Tips, there’s good news!