Your dollars spent in locally-owned businesses have three times the impact on your community as dollars spent at national chains. And local ownership means that important decisions are made locally by people who live in the community and who will feel the impacts of those decisions.
Local stores in town centres require comparatively little infrastructure and make more efficient use of public services relative to big box stores and strip shopping malls. Local stores help to sustain vibrant, compact, walkable town centres-which in turn are essential to reducing sprawl, automobile use, habitat loss, and air and water pollution.
A multitude of small businesses, each selecting products based, not on a national sales plan, but on their own interests and the needs of their local customers.
