How To Change The World With a Mug!

I’ll try to keep this short. Cambridge Dictionary defines “purchasing power” as, a person's ability to buy goods . Feeling powerful? Not yet? Okay, Okay. Let me help you. I’ll start by telling a story about you, or me, in fact we’ll call this person “Anyone.”

Anyone is a decent person with goals, dreams, love, ambitions, and empathy in their heart. They’ve worked so hard and now have finally moved into a new apartment. Everything smells like fresh paint but they quickly realize that it doesn’t really feel like home quite yet. What’s missing? Stuff. Stuff on the floors, stuff in the cabinets , and stuff on the walls!

So Anyone takes a quick trip to the mall. Bright lights, beautiful store fronts, and products from the latest trends all lure in Anyone’s purchasing power. So Anyone picks a cute yet standardized and mass produced mug for their morning coffee. Proudly takes it home, places it in their cabinet. Looks great. In the morning Anyone pours their cup of coffee into their new mug and comfily sits down to peruse the interweb. Puppy videos, facebook comments, and then - BAM! There it is, another heart wrenching story of a child taken advantage of in sweatshop labor for some greedy corporation - BAM! Another story of an animal going extinct .

BAM! BAM! BAM!

It’s enough for Anyone to lose their appetite, huh?

Anyone just doesn’t know what to do. After all they are just one small person. One person with a whole lot of personal responsibilities such as their full time job, bills, kids...etc. and what could they possibly do any way that could help? The social issues of exploitation and environmental degradation may seem far away and disconnected but in fact they aren’t . In fact, after Anyone does a little research they soon discover the power of consumerism. As of lately, consumerism’s destruction. The mug they purchased was made in a dingy factory exploiting human labor and dumping toxic chemicals into the environment thereby killing local animal populations and giving people cancer .

However, how does anybody still get the stuff that they want/need while not handing over their purchasing power to the detriment of the globe?

Sounds impossible. Wrong!

This is why I created Wild Beasts Art. It is a volunteer initiative of artists and citizens of the world. An attempt to raise awareness to people’s consumptive choices but also provide solutions. To increase people’s purchasing power so every product bought can truly bring change to the world. For every sustainably sourced mug purchased a portion of the profit goes to the ethically responsible business and the remainder gets donated to a cause the buyer gets to choose. Because every purchase you, me or anyone makes does make a difference. Ever heard the saying, money talks? It’s true and we get to decide if our dollar is going to make a good difference or bad in this world.

For example: Kiva provider of microloans ,one of our donation options, states that, “by lending as little as $25 on Kiva, anyone can help a borrower start or grow a business, go to school, access clean energy or realize their potential. For some, it’s a matter of survival, for others it’s the fuel for a life-long ambition.”

$25? That’s only buying about 11 mugs from Wild Beasts Art! We sell other products too with higher percentages donated but we’ll stick with mugs for this metaphor. I mean, walk over to your cabinet right now and count how many mugs you have. Go on, i’ll wait.

Have a sh*t ton of mugs? Think how if those had been purchased responsibly the impact you could have. Only have a few or none? Come buy some! Let’s do this. Let’s stop waiting for policy makers to make things better and just change the damn world ourselves.

Click here: http://wildbeastsart.wixsite.com/wild-beasts-art

References

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/purchasing-power
http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/lwp/NLC_childlabor.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/9266628/Over-consumption-is-killing-off-the-worlds-most-precious-wildlife-from-tigers-to-tuna.html
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170104103604.htm
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/environment/172686/textile-firm-investigated-for-pollution.html
https://www.kiva.org/about