social enterprise

The last few days have been a bit quiet on the consuming front. This puts a slightly different slant on the 30 day challenge and made me think about the perpetual drive over the last 40 years or so towards a consumerist society. The fact that I have had a large amount of choice where to consumetaken away from me, has meant no impulse buying and a large amount of forethought before purchasing anything means I have had time to reflect on issues wider than just buying from Social Enterprise.

There is a significant environmental argument against our current level of consumption which is driving climate change both in terms of manufacturing and personal consumption of energy and goods. The fact that I have consumed less than I normally would over the last few days and it hasn’t affected my quality of life at all makes me reflect on why we need to buy the things we often do for no good reason. Marketing, branding and linking our personal happiness to our consumption has appreciably benefitted private corporations and changed the game in terms of how people measure their self worth. Social Enterprises should in many ways promote consumption based on need and link that consumption to social value, but we need to be able to break the hold of the private sector on the public perception of personal utility to level the playing field. That sounds difficult and is going up against the £19.4 billion spent on advertising in the UK last year, but there are good examples of marketing in the trading for good movement especially fair-trade and the fair-trade mark.

Saying all of that I have been to the shops, a bit of grocery shopping at our local Somerfield and a visit to the Co-operative Petrol Station in Elland after a visit to Suma . I asked about buying a few products at SUMA but I was told I had to setup an account and the minimum purchase is £100, this was a bit too much for me in 1 go but SUMA suggested that I could setup a small buying group amongst friends and make the order collectively. I am keen to pursue this so if you’re interested and live in North Leeds let me know.
At lunch today I went for lunch at Hillside with SEYHs chair Dave Thornett (Dave paid so strictly speaking I wasn’t purchasing – thanks Dave) . Hillside is run by Tiger 11 Development Trust, which is a Social Enterprise I have been following since it was just an idea being discussed by Tiger 11s inspirational chief executive Jeremy Morton when he worked at Leeds Federated Housing. Tiger 11 offers workspace, meeting space as well as an excellent cafe where we had a lovely curry.