Conscientious Consumerism Can Save the World

I believe that one of the most important things that we can do to promote real positive change for the planet, both on an individual and collective level, is to be much more careful and conscientous about where we spend our money and what we spend it on. For example, I mentioned earlier how important it is to buy organic food. Let's say hypothetically that overnight, everyone decided to buy only organic food from here on out. This would activate a huge positive change. Within a month or so, you'd see all of the fast food restaurants closing and going out of business. You'd see industries like Monsanto panicking and running out of money. Most people don't realize that it's us, the consumers, who hold the real power, rather than the corporations. It's a matter of demand and supply. So if everyone switched over to only organic food, those would be the only food companies that would survive, and all of the companies that use GMO's, pesticides, herbicides, etc, would run out of business, and there'd be no market for new ones to start up.
Another good example is: let's say that everyone stopped buying hygiene products from companies that partake in animal testing. Within a matter of months, all of those companies would be going out of business, and there'd be no more animal testing in the world.

The best thing about this strategy is that it works the same for every industry. If everyone in the country only spent money on environmentally responsible, health promoting, and ethical companies, then it would be the downfall for every company that stands for the opposite of those things. All of the companies that stand for greed and corruption, and who care more about money than the welfare of the planet and all of its inhabitants, they'd all be gone and out of business in a matter of months if we, the common people, stopped supporting them by buying their products. Imagine a world with only caring, positive, and healthy companies that had good morals, and who cared about the planet and its people and animals. That sounds like a world I'd want to live in. And the good news is that we, the people, have the power to make that happen. The only hard parts are initially learning about this issue in the first place, and also learning about which companies are the positive ones to be spending money on and supporting. Luckily, there are some sources out there that can help direct us to finding out which companies are good (worth spending money on) and bad (completely avoiding). These websites are probabaly the best of those sources that I've found so far....

http://www.betterworldshopper.com/rankings.html

I wouldn't consider it to be 100% completely accurate, but it's definetely a good step in the right direction, and a good starting point in general.

Another really good one is... http://www.greenpages.org/

Fortunately, most companies that are ethical, caring, and environmentally responsible go out of their way to advertise those things on their websites, especially in their Frequently Asked Questions sections, so if you're ever questionable about any company/corporation, just check their website and it should be easy to figure out where they stand.

And just remember; the corporate world is dependent on us, the common citizens, even more so than we're dependent on them. We control the market with our spending habits. Their destinies lay in our hands. So since we're the ones with the power, let's use it wisely and really make it count.