Shopping online is fast becoming one of the most popular ways of doing our day-to-day purchases, including our groceries. In this blog, we list our top five reasons as to why shopping locally can be an incredibly rewarding experience; from fostering personal connections within the local community to encouraging sustainability, we outline the positive impact that our shopping choices can have on both our immediate surroundings and the wider world.
- Convenience
Perhaps the most obvious one, but shopping online offers a level of convenience that you don’t have access to when buying in-store. You can browse items during your lunch break, and even buy from multiple websites in a matter of minutes compared to the time it would take to drive from store to store across your city. At Plumbs’, we offer customers the opportunity to add or make changes to their existing order if they forget something (think of all the times you’re half-way home and realise you’ve forgotten the butter!)
- Lower carbon footprint
Whilst buying online offers convenience and efficiency, it does not always translate to sustainability-conscious practices. When you buy locally, you are actively reducing the carbon footprint of yourself and also the drivers who deliver the goods to you. This does not simply start and end with your journey to and from the supermarket, but it also includes the journey from the various suppliers (both nationally and internationally) to the supermarket. We try to source most of our products from companies local to East Anglia, including our fruit and veg which comes from a wholesaler based in Cambridgeshire whose ethos is also concerned with ensuring their produce comes from local or mileage-conscious suppliers to keep pollution to a minimum.
- Supporting local businesses
By choosing to shop locally, you’ll also play an active role in supporting local businesses during these unprecedented times. The positive impact this has for local businesses will have a ripple effect as, not only will you be supporting us, you will also be supporting the many other local businesses we work with, which strengthens the bonds between the local residents and businesses that are passionate about delivering the highest quality products to the wider community.
- Seasonal produce
Our fruit and veg suppliers are all Fenland-based, which means that you will be getting local, seasonal goods instead of farmers that are using artificial methods to grow tropical, or out-of-season produce and means more chemicals and water being used. Receiving a mixed crate of seasonal fruit and veg also encourages customers to try out new recipes and ideas that they might not have considered, which may encourage you to continue shopping seasonally.
- Less packaging
Going back to sustainability, when you buy your produce with Plumbs’, you’ll also significantly decrease the amount of packaging that is used for things like fruit and veg which comes in a cardboard crate as opposed to dozens of individually wrapped items. We also reuse your empty glass bottles up to 25 times to ensure that waste is kept to a minimum unlike supermarket brands that must be recycled after one use (yet an average of 16 million plastic bottles fail to be recycled every day).