Launched in 2006, Green Earth Market is an American online retailer of environmentally friendly goods, offering products that are made locally (North America), of natural, organic, or recycled materials, and/or produced in a fair trade, sustainable, or organic production process or method utilizing energy conservation. The objective is to offer alternative products for everything the "big box" stores offer in forms that have less negative environmental and social costs. With increasing attention on global warming and mankind's possible exacerbation of it through industrial and consumer practices, practices of ecological economics and ethical consumerism are growing and the big box stores are taking environmental initiatives. As many of the makers of environmentally friendly consumer products are small entities, they are typically not marketed or distributed broadly, and incapable of supplying a store the size of a Wal-Mart or Target. The Green Earth Market is one of a number of businesses giving these products wider exposure, but doing it in the manner of a general store, providing for all general goods needs for a community. This new paradigm for the 21st century general store pulls together in one place environmentally responsible products for every need from disparate small companies, working to grow them, distribute their products more broadly, and increase the environmental consumer market.
Though not launched until early 2006, the Green Earth Market was conceived originally in 1991 by Patrick Gibbons of Dallas, Texas, following the birth of his son, which occasioned him learning of and becoming an advocate for organic baby food. That grew into a greater awareness of environmentally responsible products and the fact that they existed for virtually every need, but were typically hard to learn of and find. The interim years between conception and birth of the store were spent by him gaining experience in retail, customer service and IT in order to plan and execute it successfully. After 6 months of live tests the Green Earth Market launched a formal "Grand Opening" November 30, 2006. Press Release
Famous quotes containing the words green, earth and/or market:
“Men like my father cannot die. They are with me still real in memory as they were in flesh. Loving and beloved forever. How green was my valley then.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)
“Night is a curious child, wandering
Between earth and sky, creeping
In windows and doors, daubing
The entire neighborhood
With purple paint.”
—Frank Marshall Davis (b. 1905)
“It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)