Annual Business and Leadership Conference for Women in Texas

You'll find plenty to spark ideas at the 2007 Texas Conference for Women. The power and presence of this amazing community of women provides the connection, the resources and the support you need to write the next chapter in the book of YOU, whether your goal is to build your network, impact your community, improve your communication skills, find a mentor, achieve work-life balance, advance your career, increase your energy or market yourself.

Want to Protect the Planet? Use Your Big Green Purse
by Diane MacEachern

Any conversation we have about protecting the planet needs to begin with our purses. Why? Because what we do with our purses, and more specifically, how we spend the money in our purses, makes all the difference in the world.

Now, you may not feel like your own spending counts for much. But together with me, your friends, my two sisters, the woman next door, the cashier at the 7-11, the CEO speeding by on her way to work at a company downtown, the school nurse, your kid's teacher: together, we're talking about $2.7 billion a day. $1 trillion a year. Collectively, that's what we'll earn and that's what we have the potential to spend. That's in addition to the billions we influence if we're managing budgets at home, at work or for organizations we volunteer for.

What does that money have to do with protecting our environment?

You've all heard the old saying, "Money talks." I look at it a little differently. I believe money makes things move. It's like the way flowing water can dislodge a tiny pebble, but eventually thrust even big boulders downstream. The way we spend money moves politicians to vote, governments to act, other people to care.

Our spending habits also influence the kind of products companies manufacture, and how. Because manufacturing burns so much energy and uses so many resources, a company's decisions affect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the places we go to relax and connect to our spiritual selves. Global warming? Yup, that, too.

The more we opt for products that benefit the environment, the more we move companies to be more environmentally responsible, and the better off we all are.

It's that simple.

We women spend 85 cents of every dollar in the retail marketplace today. We're not just buying diapers and cheese doodles, either. We're major purchasers of cars, electronics, tools, clothing, sporting equipment and more. We have as much potential to move manufacturers to be "green" as there are products on the shelves of our local grocery store, Home Depot, Best Buy or Sports Authority. It's what I call the potential of the Big Green Purse.

Still, using your Big Green Purse is not about buying MORE stuff. After all, "rampant consumerism" is part of what's thrown the planet into crisis mode to begin with.

Instead, Big Green Purse focuses on shifting money we already spend and buying "better" stuff: products manufactured using organic or non-toxic ingredients and energy- and water-saving practices, by adult workers, not children, who are given a fair price for their goods and services. Higher value goods help protect wildlife and nature rather than destroy them.

Quality over quantity can really pay off. It saves money to buy better products that last longer than the conventional items you're used to. It also saves time. I have energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs in my house that I haven't had to change for at least seven years, and some as long as 10 years. Talk about convenient as well as environmentally correct! The concentrated eco-friendly clothes washing detergent I use lasts me 40 or 50 washes before I need to buy a new box or bottle. I can drive my hybrid almost 400 miles before it needs a fill-up -- and then it only costs me around $30.00.

Dedicating a portion of our dollars to better, greener products is about getting more for our money while we protect the planet, too. If it adds up to less "stuff," well, that's actually the point, isn't it?

You know that other old saying, the one about the future being "in our hands"? Well, it's not.

Ladies, our future is in our purses. We can spend our money dislodging a few pebbles here and there. Or we can spend it moving big boulders downstream.

It's our money. Our world. I say we move boulders.

Diane MacEachern is the founder and publisher of www.biggreenpurse.com and the president of The World Women Want, LLC. She'll share her insights at the Conference in a session called "Living Green". Subscription to her e-newsletter, Green Purse Alerts!, is free. Her fourth book, Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World, will be published in February 2008.

< Return to the newsletter home