Mindful Spending Can Amount to Billions

Free Trade works: it allows developing countries to use their Comparative Advantage, usually labor costs, to lift huge segments of their population out of poverty. This blog supports Fair Trade, but is NOT anti Free Trade. The blog promotes the simple idea that through Mindful Spending, we can use our purchase power to support companies who go beyond the short-term bottom line approach. Depending on our means, realistically, this might mean budgeting anywhere from 0-20% of our spending towards Mindful purchases. In earlier posts, I cited Costco and Nike as examples of major companies who are taking modest steps towards including sustainability and/or social justice in their long-term strategy.

That might mean higher prices for some purchases, but in the process we are helping create and nurture the companies of the future. In 2004, Online spending alone was estimated at $15B. The LATimes reports that "... the National Retail Federation, the industry's largest trade group, raised its holiday projection last week, saying it expected sales to rise 6% this season to $439.5 billion". Let's assume that 2005 Holiday spending totals $450B. If we can carve out 5-10% of all those purchases and allocate them to Mindful Spending, we are talking $22B to $45B. Even 1% translates to $4.5B! Enough to demonstrate serious demand for companies and products who take the environment and social justice into account.

As Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, is fond to point out, we consumers need to take some responsibility and support the companies that are making the changes we envision. Corporations have no problem telling China to get its act together and enforce the Intellectual Property laws they have on the books. Unfortunately, most Corporations will not go out of their way to raise environmental or fair labor issues: in their short-term thinking, they view these dimensions as not relevant to their bottom line. But as the news out of China highlights, the lack of transparency and environmental emphasis, is an emerging issue there as well.