Why not do this all the time instead of just for a month? You should avoid buying from big corporates as much as possible in your everday life, then it will slowly become easier as you realise the things you don't need. Then you can talk about this to your friends, family and colleagues and soon they realise they can do the same.

Doing this for a month only is a token gesture and nothing more! It encourage people to save up their money and spend in the sales binge in January.

Just wondering? If everyone did stop buying from big corporations and bought from local suppliers, wouldn't the local suppliers have to expand and become corporations. In this capitalist society, chaning supplier just leads to that new supplier becomeing bigger etc...

Ok i agree that we shouldn't buy from big corporations that are corrupt and cause suffering, but stopping buying from them altogether would cause a major collapse of the economy, leaving the local suppliers in trouble also. Remember that most people in this country (and most countries) are employed by large corporations. So if they lose sales, the people lose jobs and can't afford local produce.

Until something happens to society in general, the idea of stopping buying from corps is not going to work, it will just make things worse.

Boycotting companies is not going to cause an economic downfall, or loose jobs. Remember these companies are very savvy and will all have tonnes of marketing agencies etc working for them. If a companies sales start to fall it will want to know why, it will not take long to realise that is is because of a consumer boycott in response to their ethical stance.

If the boycott has a big enough impact the company is faced with a choice, become more ethical or continue to loose sales and market share. This is why GAP and Nike etc all now have ethical policies and why BP are keen to remind us that they are the greenest oil company. Obviously this is all marketing speak, but it proves that the companies are worried about their bad ethical image. If the boycotts continue the companies will be forced to make real changes or loose even more.

Personally I would rather they didn't exits at all, I hate the blanding of culture that they cause. But I would prefer ethical multinationals to non-ethical ones.