Big Green Purse encourages women to make a difference in the marketplace because the marketplace is what ruins or restores the environment. The dynamic works like this:

 Women’s enormous consumer clout is critical to manufacturers’ success.

 Manufacturing to meet consumer demand drives pollution and climate change.

  Pollution and climate change affect our health and safety.

 If we use our consumer clout to change manufacturing, we protect our health and safety.

 We need to use our consumer clout because laws and regulations can’t do the job alone.

 Because we spend $.85 of every dollar in the marketplace, we have the clout to make a difference.

Green shopping has already had a major eco impact. It’s forced manufacturers to build hybrid cars, produce cosmetics without phthalates and parabens, grow food organically, save rainforests, and more.

Just as importantly, buying environmentally-friendly products allows women to create healthier, safer homes for their own families. Exercising control over their purchases gives women a chance to “live green” even when legislators and industries oppose laws and regulations to benefit their bottom line rather than planet.

It would be terrific to pass a spate of new green laws. Even better would be to enforce existing legislation and regulations aimed at clean air and water, endangered species, rainforests and other wild places, and global warming. Until then, we can continue to shift our spending to green products and services that  make a difference in the marketplace – and to our own daily lives.

  The One in a Million campaign is inspiring women to make a difference. By encouraging a million women to shift an initial $1,000 of their existing household budgets into green goods, women can provide a billion dollar catalyst to manufacturing to “go green.” Elana Centor wrote a terrific post on One in a Million for BlogHer. Mary Hunt at In Women We Trust is another avid proponent of women’s power in the marketplace and the One in a Million Campaign.