Celebrate Independents Week By Buying Locally and Helping the Environnment!

The American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) is celebrating "Independents Week" by asking people to take the Indie Challenge by purchasing as much as possible from your community's independently-owned businesses July 1-7.

AMIBA points out that buying locally keeps your money circulating in your community three times longer than buying at chains where most of it it leaves the community immediately. Buying locally also helps the environment by reducing supply chains (and corresponding transportation/green house gas emissions). "Locavores" -- a group that promotes eating locally -- publishes a list of "Top Twelve Reasons to Eat Locally" that includes freshness, taste, nutrition, purity, regional economic health, variety, soil stewardship, energy conservation, environmental protection, and cost.

Participants in "Independents Week" include the American Booksellers Association, American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), Association of Retail Travel Agents, Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Council of Independent Restaurants of America, Institute for Local Self-Reliance/New Rules Project, National Grocers Association (NGA) and National Main Streets Center/National Trust for Historic Preservation.

To register your community, go here. For more information on purchasing localy, see AMIBA's "The Benefits of Doing Business Locally."