Great info from Local First AZ.  Times are tough economically for most people, spending is down.  This is hard on everyone but particularly on small businesses.  If you are planning on doing some holiday shopping anyway choose locally owned businesses.  Supporting local small businesses is important and it is great to see when local officials bring attention to this.  Kudos to Mayor Phil Gordon and thanks to Local First for all they do to help the little guy!

Phoenix Mayor Proclaims ‘Buy Local Week!’
December 8th - 14th Focuses on Boosting Local Economy

As consumers head out to do their holiday shopping this year, Mayor Phil Gordon says “keep your money where your home is!”

The inaugural Buy Local Week represents a big step and tremendous act of support for LFA and all of our members.

“Consumers can make simple choices that will affect the long-term health of the city,” says Kimber Lanning, executive director of Local First Arizona.

“Local businesses throughout Phoenix have been an important part of the City’s economic development and in these challenging economic times, we are asking our residents to make buying decisions that can have a greater positive impact where they live,” said City of Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon.

On Tuesday, December 2nd, a press conference will take place at the Light Rail Stop to officially announce and introduce Buy Local Week to local business owners, consumers and council members.

LOCAL FIRST IS ASKING FOR YOUR PRESENCE AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE!!!

LET’S SHOW THE POWER IN NUMBERS.  BRING SIGNS & BANNERS FROM YOUR BUSINESSES!!

COME OUT, HAVE FUN & SHOW YOUR PASSION AND SUPPORT FOR BUY LOCAL WEEK!

Buy Local Week - Press Conference
Tuesday, December 2nd
10:30am
Light Rail Stop @ Central & Washington

To cheer on the local businesses that are the backbone of the economy, the entire Phoenix City Council has agreed to wear or bring an item to the press conference that was purchased at a local business in their district!

Happy Halloween!

Are you looking for the perfect place to celebrate this evening? One of our favorite cafes in town, Inside the Bungalow, just so happens to be having a costume party tonight where 100% of the proceeds go to charity! The event starts at 6pm and runs to 9pm at their enchanting Mesa location at Main and Robson (just East of Country Club). Click here for more info, we hope to see you there!

Click here to read our review of Inside the Bungalow and all about their fabulous food, tea, and efforts to be more “green.”

Still planning on staying home? Take the time to do some green crafting! Here is a fun way to keep yourself occupied and make your own decorations for Halloween without the big ecological impact of thousands of plastic bats and skulls. Make your own sugar skulls!

This is a guest post by Tomas of The Closet Entrepreneur.

Greetings AzSustainability readers! Your gracious blog owner, James, was kind enough to lend me your eyes and ears to share some details about the upcoming Ignite Phoenix event! If you’re new to Ignite Phoenix, it’s an information exchange aimed at fostering and inspiring Phoenix’s creative community; presenters get five minutes and 20 slides to talk about anything and everything they’re passionate about.

Our inaugural August event drew a crowd of 150+ who enjoyed presentations on OCD, green business ideas, social media, and being the only black guy in the room. For our second, event we’re looking to continue the tradition of having a wide variety of topics and one of those burning topics is sustainability. So, if you have a passion for green ideas, water conservation, alternative forms of energy, reducing your footprint, or anything else that may be of value to the Phoenix-metro community, please consider submitting it! Submissions are currently open and the deadline to submit an idea is 5:00PM on Friday October 10th, 2008. You can submit your idea and see what other ideas have been submitted by visiting the Ignite Submissions Page.

Again, the concept behind Ignite is to share and inspire so feel free to submit an idea even if it doesn’t fall under the topic of sustainability! Also, if for some reason you feel that you have nothing of value to share, which is preposterous because I know everyone has a passion they would like to talk about, then please consider coming on down to the Jobing.com Offices on October 28th to enjoy the event in person. There will be plenty of like-minded individuals enjoying the event so it’s a great opportunity to network and meet new people.

Here are all the details:

• Homepage: ignitephoenix.com
• Submissions Deadline: 5:00PM on Friday October 10th, 2008
• Event Date: Wednesday October 29th, 2008 (RSVP)
• Time: 6:00PM
• Place: Jobing.com Phoenix Offices - 4747 N. 22nd Street Phoenix, AZ

I hope you will join us!

Sincerely,
~Tomas

Hi all! We probably won’t be posting much this week, we’re on vacation! Have a great week!