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The Impact of Shopping Local: An Economic and Carbon Analysis of 5 Common Purchases


LOCO and Vancity teamed up to measure the impact of common purchases. We worked with Offsetters and Civic Economics for the carbon and economic analysis. We looked at the purchase of five products - a loaf of bread, a caffe latte, blueberries, a dress, and a bicycle - from local businesses compared to imported products from non-local businesses. We found that locally grown or made product results in a greenhouse gas reduction benefit of between 5% and 66% compared to imported products, that local products produce a local economic benefit between 2.0 and 7.1 TIMES that of imported products (average of 4.1 times), and that a local retailer compared to a non-local retailer that is purely online has a benefit of 107 TIMES.


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