Our friend Joe Grafton at Somerville Local First sent along this little tid-bit and I thought I’d share it with you. It’s just yet another reminder of the benefits of shopping locally. When you spend your hard-earned bucks locally, that’s more money for the local economy. It’s a system that benefits everyone – there’s no downside. Check it out…

There’s a new study out, further quantifies the benefits of shopping locally.  It shows that if 600,000 residents shifted 10% of their shopping locally, the community would experience tremendous economic benefits, such as:

* 1600 jobs would be created
* There would be $137 Million in new economic activity
* There would be $50 Million in new wages earned

You can find the Exec Summary and Full Report here.

– Ben

So while we all do try to buy local we’ve decided to make it an official company-wide challenge for the month of June. This month, starting last week, everyone on staff here (14 of us) is participating in what we call the “Buy Local Challenge.” (This effort is partly inspired by our friend Joe Grafton, Executive Director for Somerville Local First, and his “Lokavore Experiment.”) Sure some things will be easy, but we understand there will be challenges along the way, like buying gasoline, grocery shopping, and in some cases we may have to pay a premium. We also know we’ll have some slip-ups but what we’re mainly aiming for is the lessons learned along the way. Below are the guidelines we will follow. Be sure to check back for weekly updates.

Rule 1) If we spend money, it must be at a locally owned business.

Rule 2) When given the option, we will favor locally made products.

Rule 3) As usual we will try to give our business to CitySquares customers.

Rule 4) Take notes! Throughout the week we will all be noting our successes and our struggles in trying to buy only locally. We will update the blog weekly on what we’ve learned.

What do you think of this? Have you tried something similar?