“Oh Bell, you’re Englishness is showing. Here in America, in most places we didn’t fight for local shops, and now all we have are huge supermarkets, and the majority of those are huge national or multinational chains like walmart.
Supermarkets that are part of the multinational system are bad for the environment in many ways. They create a huge footprint taking up alot of land. They are one centralized location that everyone has to drive to rather than numerous decentralized small shops scattered around a neighborhood. In the battle for low prices they often purchase goods that are from other countries and have to be shipped here. The places where they buy their goods often have relaxed environmental standards which cause them to emit more pollution for the same amount of goods that could be made here.
As prices are dropped artificially low for any array of items, people are influenced to be more wasteful and consumeristic.Many of the products that are sold are of low quality, break easily, and are not designed to be fixed.
Finally, the large supermarkets are often poorly designed. They have little to no windows, and rely heavily on electricity for heating, cooling, and light. A small local store could have been built, or retrofitted to take advantage of natural light and passive heating and cooling.”
