Let’s get the BALLE rolling

Let’s get the BALLE rolling, by Silver Donald Cameron,

Chronicle Herald.

I PROBABLY shouldn’t have bought the Durabrand 18-volt cordless drill at Walmart. But it seemed well built, and it was a small fraction of the cost of comparable name-brand drills. So I bought it. The Achilles heel of a cordless tool is the battery, so I bought an extra one. The drill was fine, but two years later, both batteries gasped their last — and Walmart doesn’t sell Durabrand batteries anymore, though it still sells the cordless tools.

“Try the manufacturer,” shrugged the Walmart hardware clerk. The box bore no website or phone number. He slit it open and found a number — 888-267-7713. I called. A new directory assistance system applies, said a recorded voice; call 1014578# — and if you do, you’ll be charged $3.99. What?

The instruction manual revealed that the importer is Superior Airco Wholesale. Their website yielded the same 888 number — and an email address. I tried the email. It bounced back instantly.

I’m now chasing batteries on the Walmart website, which is a pain in the posterior. And I find myself wishing that I’d bought my drill from someplace like Landry Brothers Home Hardware in Louisdale. Then I could have gone over and hounded Joe Marchand, and Joe would have said, “Leave it with me. I’ll deal with it.” That’s why I buy camera equipment from Bob Martin Photographic in Port Hawkesbury, and computer equipment from Computer Connection in Antigonish or Brilliance Computers in Halifax.

And that’s why I accepted an invitation to join the board of a new organization called BALLE-NS — Business Association for Local Living Economies. BALLE Nova Scotia (www.balle-novascotia.com) is the newest of roughly 65 local BALLE networks across the U.S. and Canada, all dedicated to building a new kind of economy — community-based, green, fair and sustainable. Its members are locally owned businesses and individuals that hold themselves accountable not only to shareholders, but also to other stakeholders, to the community at large and to the environment.

Soppy, right? Business is business, buddy. It’s dog-eat-dog in this bitch of a world. Don’t you know that?

Yeah, I do. But I also know that what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, and things that can’t be sustained are (by definition) destined to collapse. Today, it’s hard for local businesses to compete with huge corporations that can produce goods in China, flood us with advertising, “roll back prices” and undercut local artisans. But those corporations evolved in a fantasy world of cheap oil and cavalier disregard of the true costs of resource depletion and environmental decline. Ultimately, they will have to pay those costs, and at that point the advantage will shift to local businesses that have been doing it right all along.

And, I might point out, thriving at it. My fellow board members represent companies like Renovator’s Resource, which recycles building materials; LED Roadway Lighting, makers of environmentally friendly street lights; Just Us Coffee Roasters, who sell great fair-trade coffee; P’Lovers, the Halifax-based chain of environmental stores; and Minas Basin Pulp and Power, a pulp mill fed entirely by recycled paper products and powered by its own hydro-electricity.

The chair of BALLE-NS is Lil MacPherson, co-owner of The Wooden Monkey, Halifax’s “locavore” restaurant, which serves organic foods from local producers. Other board members represent social-economy organizations like the Nova Scotia Community Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, the Pollination Project and Cape Breton University. Still others are self-employed: consultants Lara Ryan and Janet Larkman (who is also part-time co-ordinator), motivational speaker Bill Carr and your humble scribe. The organization’s startup has been assisted by Nova Scotia Economic and Rural Development.

In short, the green economy is already here, and now it’s getting organized. After more than a year of preparation, BALLE-NS formally launches next week,with a public lecture by organic-seed merchant Tom Stearns in Wolfville at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, and a party at the N.S. Community College’s waterfront campus in Dartmouth on Thursday from 6 to 10 p.m., MC’d by Bill Carr. Love to see you there. Register on the website, and come out to meet the future.