By Dan Coleman
No, the headline is not a typo. I did not spend the first weekend of June cavorting with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in a tropical paradise. I was attending the fifth-annual conference of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, held in Berkeley, California.
BALLE is the umbrella group for the more than 50 communities whose businesses have formed networks committed to the idea of a local living economy. The participants view their businesses and the networks that connect them to be the economic embodiment of sustainability and understand the linkage that must be found between ecology and economy.
Many BALLE networks use the slogan “Think Local, Buy Local, Be Local.†Their goal is to unite business owners, entrepreneurs, citizens and government leaders in a shared vision. They are, as Jock Lauterer described Carrboro, “relentlessly local.â€
The bread and butter of local BALLE networks is the Think Local First Campaign.
Bellingham, Washington’s BALLE network, called Sustainable Connections, has turned virtually every holiday into a celebration of the local: Love Locally for Valentine’s Day; Kiss Me, I’m Local for St. Patrick’s Day; and Independent’s Week around the Fourth of July.
Discount coupon books are nothing new. The BALLE versions offer discounts exclusively at local businesses. And they are works of art, each page an evocation of the local community and culture.
The Santa Fe Alliance partners with local banks to offer a “Locals Care†debit card. Unlike traditional reward cards which give points for purchases at national chains, Locals Care gives customers points toward local purchases. Each purchase also contributes points to a local nonprofit designated by the cardholder and to a community fund.
In addition to the expected college towns and arts-oriented communities, larger cities are turning to the Living Economy approach as well. The Latino Economic Development Center, a BALLE group in Washington DC, works with the city to provide micro-loans to an inner-city community under assault from large-scale (and upscale) redevelopment projects. Initiatives are also underway in Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Atlanta.
A recent poll by Sustainable Connections found that 47 percent of respondents report spending more locally since the network was launched a few years ago. Fifth-eight percent said they are now more deliberate about choosing local, independently owned businesses.
But BALLE is not just about promoting more local business. It is about doing so in a way that meets environmental and social responsibility goals.
Van Jones of Oakland’s Ella Baker Center cautioned conference attendees to avoid a future that he characterized as “eco-apartheid,†one in which the affluent enjoy hybrids, organic food and solar power while the poor can’t pay their utility bills and eat over-processed junk food. One of the Center’s projects is a “green collar†program that takes youth from low-income neighborhoods and trains them in a variety of green vocations — photovoltaic installation, weatherization, etc.
Oakland’s People’s Grocery has partnered with restaurants and farmers to make local, organic produce accessible to poor families. The grocery is qualified to receive food stamps and sends a truck loaded with affordable produce through low-income neighborhoods bringing healthful food to those who would otherwise be priced out of the farm-to-table movement.
Local, organic food is also promoted through creative arts and agriculture collaborations: beautiful, original posters that convey the theme “if you love to look at farmland… you’ve got to eat the view or lose itâ€; and beautiful works of sculpture made entirely from local produce.
Many of the BALLE networks are at the forefront of initiatives in green building and energy.
Sustainable Connections launched a Green Power Challenge to become an EPA-designated Green Power Community. Their goal was to move from 1 percent renewable energy to 6 percent. Amazingly, in less than a year, they reached the 11 percent mark, best in the nation for a city the size of Bellingham.
A particular interest of my own was in how local government can support such efforts.
A standout program is that of Littleton, Colorado (pop. 40,000). In 1987, Littleton pioneered an approach called “economic gardening,†which they consider “an entrepreneurial alternative to the traditional economic development practice of recruiting industries.†Littleton’s economic development office provides local businesses with high-end, corporate-level services such as “market research, competitor intelligence, industry trends, marketing lists, strategy development, web optimization and customized research.â€
A Living Economy ensures that economic power resides locally, sustaining healthy community life and natural life as well as long-term economic viability. A local BALLE network would be a natural outgrowth of the values that have guided Carrboro in recent years and a big step toward meeting our economic and sustainability goals
This article was posted on Kip Creel of In the Know — a home and garden monitoring company and relates to what I observed in England on a recent garden tour. First, there is a healthy debate among serious gardeners playing out in the letters to the editor of the major gardening magazine of whether or not the decline in independent retailers spells the doom of gardening and plant selection and development. Like folks support their independent farmers/farmers market/CSAs there is an emerging awareness that independent garden centers and greenhouses with only 30% market share should be supported by serious gardeners in order to protect the quality, selection, and expertise they have come to take for granted.
The second major theme that we observed at the Hampton Court Flower Show and through visits to Wisley and Kew was a rapidly growing effort to live with warmer temperatures and also to do something about it — Mediterranean display at Kew to showcase plants that grow in warm, arid climates. Lots of rain barrels, cisterns, and gadgetry to get the water from those collection points to the plants via tubing, pumps, etc. on display at the Hampton Court Flower Show. Battery operated lawn mowers at Hampton Court. Lots of recycled material in pots and other garden accents. Display gardens featruing waterwise, drought tolerant plants. The Dry Garden at Beth Chatto Gardens which has never received a drop of water outside of rainfall in an arid corner of Britain by the North Sea — 20 inches a year.
I owned garden centers in Greensboro, NC for 21 years and now serve independents as a sales rep for a major nursery based in CT. Although our plant material is brought in from long distances from both our CT and FL farms — we are helping independents with cutting edge material they can’t find locally and with larger and generally higher quality material than they can find locally.