In my case, it would be easier to think of companies and institutions to frequent or not boycott. I will name 3.
my local organic farmers
independent gas stations
non-corporate retailers
I didn't mention names, seeing as most of these are local. I was wondering how people getr their utilities. Are they forced upon you by the state, or can you choose ones that don't ruin the world?
It is really hard to choose an honourable utility. Often we are forced to use the local one because they aren't geared up to source elsewhere.
Telephone - there are lots of companies who scream "see how much you save" at you, and are really coy about how much they actually charge. We stick with the National company, BT - mainly because my husband used to work for them, and they pay his pension. Little things like loyalty and honour.
Electricity and Gas - cheaper to buy them together and pay monthly. Green tariffs just cost more. Perhaps an investment in solar voltaic power would be best there.
Water - ours is brought from Rhayader and the valleys thereabouts. It is a gravity fed system all the 60 miles uphill and down dale and they add fluoride to it. Yuk! It does taste nice though. No choice, unless you pay extra and buy it in plastic bottles or have a reverse osmosis filter which uses twice as much water as you would use without it. You pay for what you use, and what you send down the drainage system, twice the rate, or the metered unit value.
These do cost more but have a specific purpose to them. They are not all the same though so care needs to be taken.
Some guarantee that they will buy electricity from renewable sources (i.e. from operators of wind farms) to cover what you use. Others put the premium charged into an investment fund to build new renewable capacity. The general premise is that the more demand there is for these, the more renewable capacity gets installed.
I agree with you Ruth, that there is usually no alternative to utilities we buy from. And judging by the cost, we seem to buy with our pocketbooks.
jon, I am not that well off and would like green at a lower price. Like organic, etc., green has a niche on the market and seems to want to attract the guilty capitalist. It is very possible for a big campaign to be set up for green products, but then the profit would be lower.
Over here you can choose to get a percentage of your electricity from renewable sources and pay a bit extra for it. Our phones are in the process of being privatised, but I don't think that is the sort of product where buying local is a major concern.
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Freediver, I think that feeding money into the government coffers is usually preferable to fattening up a private corporation.
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to be able to buy Crown or Government provided utilties. We buy our telephone from British Telecom. This is because my husband worked for them for 27 years, and his pension is funded by them. As an employer, they were trained in the management school of Ghenghis Khan, (obviously taken over by one of his less than intelligent and merciful sons). They have gone global, so maybe it's not so bright, however when competition was originally brought in, they were forced to give the use of their own infrastructure over to Mercury (taken over by Cable and Wireless), headed up by the git who wrecked Rover then took a golden handshake when he left. Not surprisingly, they never paid their bills to BT, so
All of our other utilities are taken as close to the originally generated supply as possible.