On Friday the population of the United State doubles. Or at least it seems to in Muncie, Indiana. Starbucks will be crammed with saggy-eyed shoppers selling sleep for a good deal. Target’s parking lot will be bumper-to-bumper, the chaos moving tectonically slow if it moves at all.
Ears will be filled with Christmas music, hearts with joy, credit cards with debt, and fingernails caked with the epithelials of the other shoppers you had to claw out of the way between you and the Chia Obama. Muncie CSI will find them later, but for now you can enjoy shopping.
Chances are the products will be made by someone like iPhone girl, or someone I met on my Where Am I Wearing trip, who works long, hard…
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I’ve yet to see a “fair trade” shoe that didn’t deserve a name like “The Blister” or “The Air Blister.” I don’t care where you stand as an engaged consumer, if you’re looking for a shoe that you actually want to perform, your options are pretty much limited to the big boy shoe manufacturers.
National Geographic’s Green Guide helps us determine which one of the big boys we want to support.
Do we want to support a company that publishes a list of the names and addresses of their suppliers, but places a higher volume of orders in non-union factories?
Or do we want to support a company that Oxfam notes “has probably done the most research and thinking” about living wages for Asian factory workers, but does not…
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I’m speaking at the Progressive Jewish Alliance tonight in LA. I’ll be sharing some thoughts on how to be an engaged consumer, so I though I’d share them here too.
What we buy impacts our world for better and worse. Things like sweatshops and child labor are symptoms of the immense poverty that exists in our world. I believe the apparel industry should play an important role in lifting families out of poverty, but it has a long way to go.
Here are a few tips and tricks on how to be an engaged consumer.
How to think
- Check the tags of your clothing everyday before you put them on. Take a moment and think about the hard work, sacrifice, and skill that went into making…
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Engaged Consumer
What we buy impacts our world for better and worse. Things like sweatshops and child labor are symptoms of the immense poverty that exists in our world. I believe the apparel industry should play an important role in lifting families out of poverty, but it has a long way to go.
Here are a few tips and tricks on how to be an engaged consumer.
How to think
- Check the tags of your clothing everyday before you put them on. Take a moment and think about the hard work, sacrifice, and skill that went into making your garments. If you can’t locate the country on a map, find it.
- Become a brand champion – Be intentional about what you buy. Don’t buy on a whim. Checkout the…
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Today and Friday I’m speaking to the students at St. Louis Community College – Meramec. If you happen to be one of the students who heard me speak today, this post is for you.
I want this post to be a place where you can share experiences and thoughts about what it means to be a glocal living in St. Louis.
What opportunities and organizations are their in your area that need volunteers?
What opportunities are there for the Meramec community to reach out to the world (study abroad programs, cultural exchanges)?
Here are a few of the resources I mentioned during my presentation today:
Glocal Travel Guide/Glocal Volunteering Guide / Glocal Consumer Guide
Join The Go Glocal Project
Ways to Join:
- Sign up forRead More >
The Rings
My friends Dave and Sara Ring own and operate an organic grocery store in my hometown of Muncie, Indiana.
I wrote about them in my book Where Am I Eating?”:
“The Downtown Farm Stand is located in the heart of Muncie. Like our food moving overseas, like farmers moving to the burbs, life in Muncie has moved to McGalliard Road, a long strip of middle America strip malls and every chain restaurant a binge eater could want. The Farm Stand is the only place downtown where Munsonians can buy groceries these days.”
Recently Dave and Sara announced that for a variety of reasons, including declining grocery and deli sales, their store…
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(Rocking my Krochet Kids beanie)
Most folks think shopping for clothing with your ethics is a privilege that few can afford. I’ve been writing about being an ethical and engaged consumer since I traveled around the world to meet the people who made my clothes.
Since writing Where Am I Wearing? I encouraged folks to wear one thing a day they knew was produced in a way that treated people and planet fairly. I reach a lot of college students and thought that a whole outfit in such clothes would be unaffordable.
That’s what I thought . . . until today.
Today, I decided to do a little online shopping experiment: I…
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There is a scientist crossing coffee trees with scorpion venom in South America.
While this sounds like a great start to a new comic book series, I’m not sure I’d want to start my mornings with that cup of coffee. Would you? I’d rather not grow a tail by lunch. Like where would I find pants?
This fear of mine isn’t based on any rational scientific understanding, but simply from watching and reading science fiction movies. That said, I’m okay with that. It sounds creepy and as long as there are other options, I will continue to choose non-scorpion venom coffee.
In my book Where Am I Eating? I met Dr. Alvaro Gaitan, the head of plant pathology at the Cenicafe…
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If you are wondering what it is that I talk about when I travel around corrupting folks from the stage, or if you’d like to invite me to speak at your event and want a better idea of what I talk about, this is for you!
Whether from the page or the stage, I’m addicted to telling stories. I’ve delivered way more than a hundred keynotes to audiences from 3 (I was related to two of them too!) to 7,000 (I don’t think I was related to anyone). I typically custom frame a talk to fit the audience, but I know that folks like to have a clearer idea of the…
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Kimberly Palmer, author of Generation Earn, recently interviewed me about our crazy, global food system over at U.S. News & World Report.
Look folks, when it comes to food, ignorance isn’t bliss, sometimes it means you’re supporting slavery or consuming deadly chemicals.
Read the interview: Surprising Facts Where Food Comes From…
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