10 Daily Habits That Accidentally Harm The Environment - Page 4

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Ordering from a-far

When you see campaigns encouraging you to “shop local,” “shop small,” or “support small businesses,” it’s not just about supporting your local community (though that’s also important); it’s also about saving the environment. Somehow, flying a cute sweater over from China costs you less than getting a limited edition, handmade one from a local boutique…even though that cheaper sweater required a plane ticket to get to you. And that’s the problem: when we import goods to capitalize on the affordable labor and materials found overseas, we make the environment pay the highest cost. In fact, some environmentalists report that, while the United States has been able to reduce local greenhouse emissions in recent years, that was a direct result of us importing more goods i.e. relocating the pollution caused by our consumption. We just made the pollution somebody else’s problem…for now.